SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #670 (37), Friday, May 18, 2001
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TITLE: Officials Baffled Over Property Order
AUTHOR: By Yevgenia Borisova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: One jacuzzi: $201,362.
A bench on wheels: $1,675.
A set of referee whistles: $1,231.
So reads a list of more than 100 items that were recently ordered by the Kremlin property department to spruce up the government's prestigious Va tu tin ki sanatorium, according to documents first obtained by the Vedomosti newspaper earlier this week.
The $20.7 million proposal, which calls for four jacuzzis, 24 benches on wheels and two sets of whistles, sets prices for the goods at up to 16 times more than their real market value, experts said.
The leaked documents have created an uproar in government circles since their publication in Vedomosti on Monday.
The presidential property department has opened an investigation into just how the refurbishment request, which it says was falsified, was sent for approval to the Finance Ministry, the Economic Development and Trade Ministry and the state-run Vneshekonombank.
The current scandal is reminiscent of the days when the presidential property department was run by Pavel Borodin, who ordered costly renovations for Kremlin properties during his stint under former president Boris Yeltsin. Borodin is currently facing trial in Switzerland, on charges of having used Swiss companies to embezzle millions of dollars that had been intended for the refurbishment of the properties in question.
Property department spokesman Viktor Khrekov said Tuesday his office had drafted a request for funds to refurbish the Vatutinki sanatorium, located 100 kilometers south of Moscow. But he said that the request was not the same one that ended up in the hands of the ministries, the bank and Vedomosti.
He refused to release a copy of the request, which he said had most likely been switched by Borodin-era officials who were still working at the department on orders to get even with the current property chief Vladimir Kozhin.
"[The leaked documents] are trying to show that we are doing the same as Borodin did," Khrekov said. "But we don't. Things have changed here since Kozhin took over. The request that we prepared meant to get foreign investment to upgrade the sanatorium and not only its equipment."
A source in the property department said that the Borodin employees were probably acting on orders from well-connected people being kicked out of prestigious Kremlin-owned dachas on Rub lyov skoye Shosse.
The source, who asked not to be identified, said that Kozhin's first deputy, Vladimir Kokunov, and Alexander Balashov, who oversees the property department's spas, are currently ordering people out of the dachas.
Balashov's signature appeared on the $20.7 million request, and Ko ku nov's was on an accompanying cover letter.
The goods that were requested in the documents, which have been obtained by The St. Petersburg Times, were to be imported from Germany under a 1998 program in which the government received loans from the German insurance agency Hermes to be used for the purchases of German products.
Also on the list were requests for two sets of bodybuilding weights at the cost of $1,310 each, 66 armchairs at $512 each, 102 mirrors at the exorbitant rate of $2,181 each and 10 desks at $1,742 each.
The benches on wheels cost about $100 at current market prices and the weights are worth about $500, Vedomosti said. The jacuzzis are worth no more than $30,000.
Sergei Bayov, head of investments at the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, said his office would never have honored the request because it had been improperly filled out. He said the signatures were photocopied, the papers were not sealed, and the sums were too high.
He hinted that the presidential property department was probably being pressured by those people losing their dachas.
"Look at the way it [the department] is changing, how it is cutting the perks that state officials and businessmen have enjoyed for so long," Bayov said.
TITLE: New Book Reveals Secret World of Tattoos
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Danzig Baldayev has spent his whole life in the company of prisoners and criminals. He has searched them out in jails and gulags, on beaches, in banyas, and even in the morgue. But Baldayev's obsession springs not only from his career as a prison warder and detective. When you're looking for tattoos, prisoners are the best place to start.
For over 50 years, Baldayev, 76, has sought and "collected" 3,600 tattoos, an odyssey that started when he came to work at Leningrad's notorious Kresty prison in 1948. On Tuesday, Baldayev unveiled the first fruits of his labors at that same prison, in the form of "Prisoners' Tattoos," the first book in what is intended as a three-part series.
"Here is all our dark history presented in tattoos," Baldayev said at the book's presentation to dozens of journalists - although prisoners were kept away.
"Prisoners' Tattoos" is a mixture of photographs of heavily tattooed men and women (mostly the former), as well as sketches of individual tattoos with a large amount of annotation explaining the hidden meanings and messages of the prisoners' art. From the overtly political to the erotic - and often a ribald combination of the two - tattoos are an entire criminal argot.
For example, they can reveal what kind of crime a prisoner committed, the bearer's place in the criminal hierarchy, and how many years he has been sentenced to. Drug addicts are known by their tattoos of spiders webs, or perhaps of a genie emerging from a bottle; branches and roses are for thieves; eight-point stars or crosses signal the bearer is in for murder; while the number of domes on a church, or number of barbs on a length of wire, represent the number of years to which a prisoner has been sentenced.
Tattoos of religious symbols were often worn as good-luck emblems, while the name or portrait of a woman representated a kind of engagement certificate. Tattoos are also forcibly painted on criminals suspected of homosexuality.
"To my mind, tattoos are the media of the prisons ... a unique language of symbols," Baldayev said.
Baldayev's family had first-hand experience of Russia's prisons. His father, Sergei, a well-known ethnographer from Buryatiya, was denounced to Stalin in 1938 by a man who was after Sergei's wife, branded an enemy of the people and imprisoned for two years. Sergei Baldayev once calculated that 58 members of his and his wife's families died either in exile or in prison as a result of the repressions.
Danzig and his younger sister were sent to an orphanage for children of repression victims. After serving in the army in World War II, he came to Leningrad in 1948 and was ordered by the NKVD to work as a warden in Kresty.
Later, he joined the Criminal Investigations Department of the city's police, where as a robberies investigator he began sketching the tattoos of criminals, getting them to pose in exchange for cigarettes. His fellow detectives even said that "a record of tattoos could be of great help in registering criminals."
Baldayev said that Russian prisoners boasted the most extensive "school" of tattoos in the world. Politics, he said, was naturally the dominant characteristic: During the repressions, many prisoners carried tattoos of Vladimir Lenin, which they considered would save them from execution; other tattoos range from making ribald comments about Communist Party leaders, to works involving complex symbolism uniting themes of prison life, good and evil, war, sex, violence and - inevitably - alcohol.
Baldayev's first book contains 773 examples from his collection, with the other two books to be published next year, according to Valentin Tublin of Limbus Press.
Tublin added that they were looking for interested parties to publish the book in Europe.
But for those looking to emulate the underworld and get a prisoner's tattoo, Vladimir Kalinichenko, senior inspector with the Main Prison Service, had words of warning.
Saying that prisoners at Kresty managed to give themselves tattoos even though it was against the rules, Kalinichenko added that it was not unknown for new convicts to be punished for displaying false "titles" when they arrived in prison.
TITLE: EU Urges Moscow To Use Euro
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW - European Union leaders on Thursday urged Russia to start accepting euros instead of dollars for its exports, promising a boom in investments and trade.
But the bonhomie at their summit was shadowed by EU criticism of Russia's war in Chechnya.
Russia currently gets paid in dollars for its oil and gas exports to Europe, and the EU wants to switch to euros instead. The two sides signed a joint communique agreeing to discuss the issue in detail.
Russia has hoped that Thursday's meeting would help cement its place in Europe, reflecting Moscow's apparent desire to offset a chill in relations with the United States, strained over U.S. plans for a missile defense system, spy scandals and Russian arms sales to Iran.
Romano Prodi, chairman of the European Commission, strongly pushed for the use of the euro, saying it would help bolster trade, attract new investment and balance Russia's hard currency reserves.
"It is a clear sign of commitment to closer relations between the EU and Russia," Prodi said at a Kremlin news conference with President Vladimir Putin, Javier Solana, EU foreign policy and security commissioner, and Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, whose country holds the rotating chairmanship of the EU.
Putin avoided the euro issue at a news conference, but hailed Prodi's proposal to consider a concept of a common European economic space. He also urged the EU to lift anti-dumping barriers imposed against some of Russia's exports.
Prodi and others also mentioned progress on a proposed energy charter that would encourage EU investments into Russia's energy sector but said that it needed more work by experts. They gave no details.
Putin and the EU leaders also discussed EU assistance for the destruction of Russia's chemical and nuclear weapons arsenals, environmental programs and joint action against money laundering and organized crime.
"Our meeting was constructive, rich in substance and extremely fruitful," Putin said, adding that the relations with the EU were a priority for Russia.
"The significant role that the EU is playing in the European and world policy is objectively pushing us toward closer cooperation," Putin said at the start of talks in the Kremlin's ornate Catherine Hall.
EU leaders renewed a pledge to back Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization and said they would work with their hosts to form a "unified economic space," a concept whose meaning is vague.
Putin was upbeat about his stewardship of the economy, saying growing output, liberal tax and customs policies and a reduction in red tape should encourage foreign investors.
The final summit document acknowledged progress in economic reform. "European countries have every reason to see Russia as a reliable and promising partner," Putin said.
In addition to agreeing to examine broader use of the fledgling euro in trade and the economic ties, the two sides discussed moves to increase the euro portion of the Central Bank's $32.5 billion in reserves, which is currently mostly held in dollars.
Prodi welcomed the news, saying, "Russia has much to gain from rebalancing its currency reserves."
EU chiefs also agreed to help develop Russia's impoverished Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, a former nuclear port closed to foreigners in the Soviet era. Sandwiched between EU hopefuls Poland and Lithuania, it is plagued by organized crime and health and environmental problems.
But they failed to nail down a nuclear waste clean-up pact signed in 1999 with Russian which could release hundreds of millions of dollars to deal with dangerous nuclear waste.
The program, which includes Norway and the United States, would target reactors in decommissioned nuclear submarines and spent fuel rods in northern Russia and on the Kola peninsula. The two sides are wrangling over the extent of Russia's legal liability should an accident happen during a cleanup.
Despite the friendly atmosphere at the summit, the EU leaders prodded Putin on Chechnya. Persson urged Russia to investigate allegations of atrocities against civilians contained in a recent report by the Human Rights Watch. "That's the way to regain confidence by the population," he said.
Fifty-one bodies were discovered in a mass grave in Chechnya earlier this year in Dachny, an abandoned village that Human Rights Watch said was less than a kilometer from Russia's main military base of Khankala. Russia said Wednesday that the identities of 24 of the bodies had been established so far and all of them were civilians.
Putin on Thursday acknowledged that civilians had suffered in the 20-month-old war, but again insisted that the campaign was needed to crush the "religious extremists" who he said wanted to carve a separatist Islamic state.
He compared the Chechen rebels to Albanian separatists in and around Kosovo, and tried to turn the tables on the EU, saying that failure to disarm the Albanians would lead to them spreading crime and violence throughout Europe.
Russia strongly opposed the 1999 NATO airstrikes on Yugoslavia over Serbian violence against Kosovo Albanians.
- AP, Reuters
TITLE: Yakovlev and Cherkesov: A Tense 12 Months
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: It's almost exactly one year ago that Viktor Cherkesov was appointed governor general of the Northwest region, one of seven heads of the supersized federal districts created by President Vladimir Putin.
And it's almost exactly 12 months to the day that Vladimir Yakovlev, the man many thought had most to lose from Putin's new order, was elected to a second term as governor of St. Petersburg.
But while a wide variety of analysts predicted that Yakovlev's hold on power would not last long, the governor is still there and his approval ratings are still high - albeit with a rather different role than he was used to as he and Cherkesov have formed an uneasy symbiosis.
Last May, as Putin was settling in to the presidency and promising to rein in Russia's often unruly regional leaders, Yakovlev was seen as target number one. This, after all, was the man Putin branded a Judas when he first won the city's top job in 1996, ousting his and Putin's former boss, Anatoly Sobchak.
Putin refused to work under Yakov lev and left for Moscow, where he took up a post under the wing of Anatoly Chubais. His career rocketed when he was unexpectedly made prime minister in place of a shocked Sergei Stepashin, before going on to succeed Boris Yeltsin right at the beginning of 2000.
And for a while, it seemed the predictions were right. Cherkesov - a former member of the KGB's Fifth Directorate, which controlled surveillance of the media, churches, educational institutions, trade unions and the general public - was soon exerting his influence on regional departments of the law enforcement structures. As Yakovlev's old supporters in the Legislative Assembly formed a loose alliance under the flag of the Unity faction, rumors abounded of the governor's imminent resignation, or of a "sideways move" to a job with the largely symbolic Russia-Belarus Union.
REALIGNMENT
The Cassandras may yet be proven right. But instead of open conflict, Yakovlev and Cherkesov have apparently learned to live with one another. Yakovlev is still in power, and still as popular as ever. According to the research group Gallup St. Petersburg, the governor's public-trust rating is currently at 63 percent, close to polls conducted just before his last election.
Contrast that to the figures for Cherkesov, and it becomes evident that the former spy's past still clings to him: an approval rating of 19 percent, as opposed to the 28 percent of St. Petersburg citizens who say they do not trust the governor general - and 26 percent who say they don't even know who he is.
"Sitting in Moscow, Yakovlev seems to be a much brighter figure," said Leonid Smirnyagin, political analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for Internation Peace. "Cherkesov is the most secretive of all the governors general. Because of his experience in the KGB [and FSB], he doesn't go looking for publicity."
Sergei Markov, the deputy editor of the pro-government news Web site Strana.ru, concurred. "I think the governor is still No. 1 in the city. Cherkesov has succeeded in making regional representatives of federal structures subordinate to the center. But his attempts to create a council on investment haven't worked well. It looks like he doesn't have the political experience."
The latter sentiment certainly seemed to ring true after a series of PR gaffes Cherkesov made soon after coming to the region. His commandeering of Wedding Palace No. 3 as his headquarters outraged many locals, while soon afterward a story circulated that the owner of a beer tent in Sestroretsk had been forced to move when the tent was deemed too close to Cherkesov's dacha. Earlier this year, the governor general was caught out when he penned an introduction to a magazine that contained an openly racist article.
JUST DOING MY JOB
Even by the admission of Yakovlev's spokesperson Alexander Afanasyev, however, the balance of power has altered. As Afanasyev put it, Yakovlev has switched from politics to management, concentrating on projects such as the Ring Road, a road along the Novo-Smolenskaya Embankment, and several pedestrian streets in the city.
"Yakovlev can build and Cherkesov can't," Afanasyev said. "On the other hand, the work of the presidential representative is only noticed by a small circle of people."
In his dealings with the media, Cherkesov generally gives little away, but two themes he repeats constantly are bringing local legislation into line with federal law, and uniting federal power structures under one umbrella.
They were themes he repeated at a press conference on Wednesday to summarize his first year in the job.
"[Over the past 12 months], over 600 regional laws were found to contradict federal legislation, and about 500 of them have already been changed or abolished," he said, face-to-face with local journalists but also talking to reporters across the region by video link as if to emphasize the geographical sweep of his responsibilities.
He continued to play the law-and-order card. "We have conducted more than 20 inspections of regional federal structures, and discovered financial violations in some of them," he said naming only the replacement of the Pskov prosecutor, who was "not in the habit of observing his duties as prosecutor," as an example.
UNDER THE SURFACE
Amendments to local laws have been a mild irritation to City Hall and the Legislative Assembly, but hardly constitute a power threat.
And the week of Cherkesov's press conference was also the week that the City Prosecutor's Office dropped a widely publicized corruption case implicating officials from Smolny. The case centered on the embezzlement of over 70 million rubles from the city budget to finance the Fatherland-All Russia congress in 1999. Yakovlev was then the head of All Russia.
But for some observers, none of this means that the tension between governor and governor general has gone away.
"The conflict [between Yakovlev and Cherkesov] is hidden, so it's not so noticeable in public," said Vadim Kara syov, a political analyst with Gallup St. Petersburg, in a telephone interview on Thursday.
One of the strangest aspects to the run-up to last year's gubernatorial elections was the abortive attempt, apparently on the part of the Kremlin, to find a credible opposition candidate. First Sergei Stepashin was strongly favored as Moscow's choice, but he stepped aside in favor of Vice Prime Minister Valentina Mat vi yen ko, who herself dropped out after meeting with Putin.
So if there is a quiet battle going on to make an assault on Yakovlev's popularity, it is focusing on the control of the media, according to Yury Vdovin, co-director of human rights organization Citizen's Watch.
Vdovin said that the battle so far had left Yakovlev with control or influence over only a handful of local newspapers, which are still financed by City Hall, as well as the notoriously pro-governor Petersburg Television.
"Yakovlev tried to drag though the Legislative Assembly a law that would get the local media on his side," Vdovin said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. "But the draft law was so obviously pro-City Hall, it was rejected."
Cherkesov, on the other hand, has got the major publications and other TV stations on his side, largely through the St. Petersburg League of Journalists, comprising editors of 15 of the city's biggest news outlets. These include the daily newspapers Nevskoye Vremya, Smena, Sankt Petersburgskiye Vedomosti, Vesti, Delovoi Peterburg and Chas Pik, the news agencies Severo-Zapad, Itar-Tass, and IMA-PRESS, and Radio Evropa Plus, Radio Baltika and Channel 6 television.
A further blow to City Hall came last month with the removal of Petersburg Radio - part of the same company as Petersburg Television - from the main channel on the fixed wired receivers in Soviet-era homes. In its place is now the state-run Radio Rossiya.
This might not have been Cherkesov's work, but Vdovin nonetheless sees it as being to the advantage of the governor general.
"[Cherkesov] has been busy creating a power field around himself. ... As a person from the FSB system, he is guided by the ambitions of the power structures, not by [questions] of defending human rights," Vdovin said.
JUST HOW POWERFUL?
Perhaps two final views, contrasting but not mutually exclusive, best sum up the governor general's first year.
"Cherkesov has succeeded in proving that he is not as scary as he first seemed to be," said Leonid Kesselman, an analyst at the Russian Academy of Sciences. "But he has created a second center of power, and the city has become more stable."
But the Carnegie Center's Smirnyagin said that whatever power the governor general has, it is largely illusory. "Regional governors ran from [the governors general] with their tails between their legs because of Putin and his popularity," he said, "but in reality, they are still a powerful opposition."
TITLE: FSB Upbeat on Starovoitova Case
AUTHOR: By Masha Kaminskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: On the birthday of State Duma Deputy Galina Starovoitova, who was murdered in November 1998, the Federal Security Service said that it had a good chance of solving the case.
Ruslan Linkov, Starovoitova's aide who was with her when she was killed, reacted with skepticism to the announcement. The FSB made its statement on Thursday, the day Staro voi to va would have turned 55.
Investigators have not discussed the case with him or held any interrogations for around two years, Linkov said.
"During the past 2 1/2 years, the FSB has regularly circulated press releases on the course of the investigation," he said. "This happens every six months, when the term of the preliminary investigation is supposed to be prolonged."
Linkov also said that the FSB had made the exact same statement last November. "It looks like a new way of saying the same old thing."
The FSB could not be reached directly for comment Thursday.
Starovoitova, who was also the founder and leader of the Democratic Russia party, was gunned down in the stairwell of her apartment building in St. Petersburg on the night of Nov. 20, 1998. Linkov, now head of the party's local branch, survived the attack despite being shot in the head and neck.
Yury Vasilchenko, of the information center of the Prosecutor General's Office, would not comment on whether the investigation, the term of which was due to end on Sunday, would be prolonged. However, an Interfax report on Thursday said that it had.
"Our work has become more concrete of late, because we have established the identities of those who may be connected to [Starovoitova's] assassination," said Alexei Vostretsov, head of the St. Petersburg FSB's press service, in remarks quoted by Interfax.
"[We can] be even more certain that we will solve this case." He did not elaborate on the identities, Interfax reported.
However, further information Vost ret sov gave on the course of the investigation was very similar to that released by the FSB seven months ago.
"Yes, [we have] a real chance of solving the case - meaning that not only the assassins but the possible mastermind of the murder will be seized," he told The St. Petersburg Times at the time.
On Thursday morning, Staro voi to va's friends and relatives came to pay homage at her grave in the Alexander Nevsky cemetery. A documentary entitled "Galina Starovoitova: A Birthday" by local filmmaker Natalia Mikova was later presented at the Olympia casino.
"No one really knew what a rich personality Staro voi to va was," Mikova said. The documentary is her third on the politician's life and work.
"I'm not sure what Galina would have been doing now if she were alive," said Starovoitova's sister, Olga, in televised remarks. "But I think she would have tried to consolidate our democratic forces, tried to work closely with Putin on that - after all, she knew him well."
Also Thursday, the U.S. State Department announced that ex-navy captain and environmentalist Alexander Nikitin, and co-chairman of the presidential commision on human rights William Smirnov, had been awarded this year's Starovoitova Prize, set up for outstanding work in the field of human rights.
TITLE: Floods in Siberia Forcing Evacuations
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW - Helicopters helped evacuate residents from flooded homes in eastern Siberia on Thursday, as fighter jets dropped bombs on ice that is jamming the Lena River and causing widespread flooding.
One Mi-8 helicopter crashed near the town of Lensk as rescue workers retrieved people from a roof, said Marina Ordynskaya, a spokeswoman for the Emergency Situations Ministry. No casualties were reported in the crash.
Most houses in Lensk, a town of 27,000, were flooded, and evacuees were being housed in 14 emergency centers, according to Ordynskaya.
The town, in the vast and sparsely populated Yakutia region in eastern Siberia, remained without electricity or telephone service, she said.
Commercial NTV television showed streets covered with water and debris scattered about. Emergency Situations Ministry officials said that more people were being evacuated, but that many were choosing to stay on the roofs of their homes for fear of looting.
The water had fallen Wednesday after officials dynamited a 100-kilometer ice jam clogging the river, but rains upstrea sent a new surge during the night, Ordynskaya said.
Spring flooding is an annual occurrence in Russia, despite the efforts of officials to blast ice jams - including the occasional use of fighter jets to drop bombs.
Across Russia, some 4,900 homes in 32 towns are under water, and 3,600 people have been evacuated, the Itar-Tass news agency reported, citing the Emergency Situations Ministry.
The floodwaters have mainly affected rural areas, but some streets in major cities such as Irkutsk in eastern Siberia near Lake Baikal are underwater, media reports said.
Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu is in the area to supervise relief efforts. About 20 tons of food, plus field kitchens and generators, have been airlifted to Lensk, Interfax said.
TITLE: Petersburg Radio Loses Case, Vows To Battle On in Court
AUTHOR: By Masha Kaminskaya
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The Petersburg Radio station has lost a lawsuit that was filed in an attempt to get back on the "first button," the main channel on the wired receiver sets in Soviet-era apartments that only broadcast fixed channels.
On April 1, Petersburg Radio was shifted from the first to the third button - which has a much weaker signal - by order of the Press Ministry. Now broadcasting on the first channel is the state-run station Radio Rossiya.
The local station said that the switch would lose it advertising revenue and most of its 2.5 million listeners. Thousands of people, many of them elderly city residents who form the bulk of the station's audience, staged a demonstration outside Petersburg Radio's studios when the news was announced.
Petersburg Radio had filed suit against the St. Petersburg Radiotransmissions Network and the Center for Radiotransmission and Radiocommunications, state-run organizations who carry the signal to the receiver sets, for breach of contract. On Thursday, however, the City Arbitration Court ruled against the station.
"[We have] taken the decision absolutely calmly," said Boris Grumbkov, lawyer for Petersburg Radio. "This conflict is a difficult one and can only be resolved in higher courts."
Grumbkov said that Petersburg Radio had the right to broadcast on the first button until 2003, and that the station has also filed a suit against the Press Ministry with the Moscow Arbitration Court, demanding that its decision be overturned.
"A hearing is due to take place on June 13, and our case will depend on the court's decision 99 percent," said Grumbkov.
Interfax quoted First Deputy Press Minister Mikhail Seslavinsky, who signed the decree giving Radio Rossiya the main channel, as saying that the St. Petersburg court's ruling had effectively wrapped up the issue.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: Mirilashvili Still Held
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The City Prosecutor's Office has prolonged the pre-trial detention term for the well-known Russian-Israeli businessman Mikhail Mirilashvili, who is being held in remand prison on kidnapping charges.
According to prosecutor's spokes person Gennady Ryabov, Mirilashvili will stay in detention until July 23.
"The case is being investigated in the usual way," said Ryabov said on Monday, declining to give details.
Mirilashvili, a well-known local figure and owner of the Conti chain of casinos, as well as other businesses, was arrested on Jan. 23 for the kidnapping of two unidentified people.
According to Interfax, Mirilashvili's lawyer Yury Novolodsky said he intended to appeal the prosecutor's decision in court.
Statue To Return
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - The city administration has made a final decision that a replica of the controversial statue of Peter the Great in the Latvian capital Riga will be installed in St. Petersburg at the peak of the city's 300th-anniversary celebrations in 2003.
The two sides reached an agreement on Wednesday when City Hall representatives visited Riga.
Governor's spokesperson Alexander Afanasyev said that it had not yet been decided where the statue would be placed.
The statue, which is in a state of disrepair, was originally installed in Riga in 1910. Earlier this year, the Rigo parliament made the decision to send the statue, or a replica, back to Russia.
Tobin's Mother Visits
VORONEZH, Central Russia (AP) - The mother of an American Fulbright exchange student who was convicted on drug charges and accused of U.S. intelligence connections said after meeting with him Thursday that her jailed son was "in good spirits."
Alyce Van Etten and her husband, Jan, flew to Voronezh for a brief meeting with her 24-year-old son, John Tobin. He was arrested Jan. 26 for possession of a small amount of marijuana and sentenced last month to 37 months in a Russian prison.
His mother emerged from a two-hour meeting in the jail with a wide smile. "Jack is fine. He's in good spirits, really good spirits. It was great to see him," she said.
Gusinsky Replaced
MOSCOW (AP) - The Russian Jewish Congress elected a new president Wednesday to replace tycoon Vla di mir Gusinsky, who fled Russia last summer to evade attempts to prosecute him on what he calls politically motivated fraud charges.
Gusinsky resigned from the congress on March 1, saying he could no longer serve effectively as head of the organization from Spain, where he was awaiting a Spanish court decision on Russia's request to extradite him. The court later refused the request.
Leonid Nevzlin, deputy head of the Yukos oil company, was elected president Wednesday by the congress' 149 delegates. The vote was unanimous save for one abstention, the Interfax news agency reported.
Anti-Semitic Bill Out
MOSCOW (AP) - The State Duma on Thursday rejected a motion asking President Vladimir Putin officially to condemn "the appearance in Russia of anti-Semitism, nationalism and fascism."
Lawmakers turned down the appeal for the third time Thursday, with most of the chamber's members absent during the vote. Some 219 voted in favor, five votes short of the necessary 226 to pass in the 450-seat Duma. Seventy-three deputies voted against the measure, and 108 did not vote.
Fringe nationalist and fascist groups have sprung up in Russia since the Soviet collapse in 1991, but remain small and play no significant role in national politics.
The Duma is dominated by centrist parties that support Putin.
Kofi Gets Support
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia will support UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's bid for a second term, Foreign Minister Igor Iva nov said Wednesday.
"Russia highly values Mr. Annan's personal contribution to strengthening the role and the authority of the United Nations, and Russia will be ready to support Kofi Annan's candidacy for a second term as secretary general," Ivanov said following talks with Annan.
The 63-year-old Ghanaian's term expires Dec. 31. Support from Russia is key, since as a permanent member of the Security Council it can veto a nomination before it is sent on to the General Assembly for a final vote.
In the course of their meeting, Ivanov said, he and Annan discussed conflicts in the Middle East, the Balkans and Afghanistan and "ways to enhance the role of the United Nations."
Emergency Law Passed
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Federation Council approved a new law Wednesday, which gives the president the power to declare a state of emergency and sets out the circumstances in which he can make such a decree.
The law, passed in the Federation Council after being approved in the State Duma, now only needs President Vladimir Putin's signature to come into force.
Such a law, common in many countries, had been lacking from the Russian constitutional framework since 1993. A previous draft was rejected by a Communist-dominated parliament several times in defiance of then-President Boris Yeltsin.
The law's adoption is a sensitive issue in Russia, which has seen two attempted coups in the last 10 years and where authoritarian rule has been the norm, not the exception.
But its adoption now is seen as filling in a constitutional gap rather than raising fears that it could be part of what liberals allege is a crackdown on civil liberties by Putin.
Ivanov Flies to U.S.
MOSCOW (AP) - Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov left Thursday evening for the United States for meetings with U.S. President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and other American officials.
Strategic stability, regional security and economic ties will be the focus of talks, according to a Foreign Ministry statement, as well as plans for the first meeting between Bush and President Vladimir Putin. The presidents are expected to meet at the July summit of the Group of Eight industrial nations in Genoa, Italy.
Ivanov and Powell have three meetings scheduled for Friday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko told ORT television. Ivanov is also to meet with Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.
TITLE: Horse Sculptures Ready To Be Returned
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The four legendary horse sculptures that have been missing from Nevsky Prospect's Anichkov Bridge for a year will soon be returned to their places.
In the dark hours of May 25 to 26, the new-look "Taming of Horses," the creation of 19th-century French sculptor Peter Clodt, will be lifted back onto the bridge - but instead of the gray-green horses of 12 months ago, the sculptures now have an olive-black sheen, according to Vladimir Timofeyev, director of the St. Petersburg Sculpture Museum.
The horses were removed for urgent restoration work in a $120,000 project sponsored by Balt-Uneximbank, which also financed the $1 million restoration of the two Rostral Columns on Vasilievsky Island.
The restoration work was originally to last two years, but the up-to-date materials and methods used shortened the time to just a year, said Snezhana Nikolayeva, Balt-Uneximbank press secretary.
Nikolayeva said that restoration firm Intarsiya, the City Restoration College and various metals factories contributed their expertise to the restoration. "A lot of money was invested in scientific research," she said.
The work became necessary when cracks appeared in the structures, and one horse was even found to be leaning from its pedestal toward the waters of the Fontanka.
Using laser technology and specially developed chemicals, restorers covered the horses with a layer of copper the thickness of a human hair to protect them - hence their new color, said Timofeyev.
"This will protect Clodt's original work from the aggressive pollution [caused by heavy traffic] in the very center of the city," he said, adding that the copper layer should keep the horses safe for up to 30 years.
While it was obvious that the horses needed repairs, the precise nature of the damage was not known until they were taken away. Timofeyev said that restorers also found out other interesting facts about the sculptures: that they are all of different weights - between five to six tons - and have hidden hatches on the backs of the horses.
Most importantly, none of the cracks had allowed in any water, which would have caused more serious damage.
The horse sculptures have only moved from the spot once, when they were taken out to the nearby Leningrad Pioneers Palace Park to be buried during Nazi bombing raids in World War II. Immediately after victory over the Germans, they were removed from their premature grave, cleaned up with gasoline, and put back on their pedestals.
Irina Lermontova, a scientific expert at the Sculpture Museum, said that the theme of "Taming of Horses" is the victory of man over nature. The four statues show the human figure increasingly dominant, from being thrown by the horse in one to standing as its master in the last.
The only other time the horses were given any attention was in 1975, when specialists replaced some missing parts and covered them in a patina to prevent further oxidation.
TITLE: Dutch Company in Talks To Lift The Kursk
AUTHOR: By Simon Saradzhyan
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: After unexpectedly ditching an international consortium set to help lift the sunken Kursk submarine, Russian officials have stepped up talks with a Dutch company that has no experience lifting sunken vessels, in hopes of clinching a contract Friday.
Frans Seumeren, president of Dutch heavy lifting and transport company Mammoet, arrived in Russia for talks Wednesday, company spokespersonLarisa Seumeren said in a phone interview from Amsterdam on Thursday.
The spokesperson confirmed that negotiations between Mammoet and the Russian side were underway, and said more information would be available only once a contract was signed.
She said the company has no experience lifting sunken vessels, but declined to comment on whether it would hire subcontractors to retrieve the Kursk, which sank with all 118 crewmen aboard in the Barents Sea last August.
Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov said earlier this week that the operation to lift the Kursk would be completed by September 20. On Thursday, an aide to Klebanov - who heads the commission charged with investigating the sinking - told reporters that the contract for lifting the sub and towing it to a shipyard in Murmansk would be signed Friday.
Klebanov created an uproar Wednesday with his announcement that Russia has decided to abandon an international consortium it had been negotiating with, opting for another group of companies, which he also declined to name.
Klebanov said the Russian government would foot the bill for the entire operation, contrary to an earlier plan under which Moscow and the Kursk Foundation - set up to raise Western donations for the lift - would spilt the $80 million price tag.
Previously, Klebanov and Igor Spassky, head of the St. Petersburg-based Rubin design bureau, which developed the Kursk, had been negotiating with the Netherlands' Smit Internationale and Heerema and the Norwegian arm of the U.S. firm Halliburton.
However, talks with them stalled because the Russian government and the Kursk Foundation proved unable to raise the needed funds, Smit Internationale spokesperson Lars Wolder said in a phone interview Thursday.
In April, according to Wolder, the consortium suggested to the Russian side that the operation should be delayed until 2002, as there was insufficient time to prepare for a safe lifting and carry it out before storms hit in October.
On Thursday, Rubin's Spassky faxed an official letter to Smit's Rotterdam headquarters, saying the Russian side refuses to delay the lifting and, hence, is terminating negotiations with the consortium, Wolder said.
He pointed out that only "half a dozen" companies in the world specialize in lifting sunken vessels in the open sea, and Mammoet has no experience in salvage and towage. But he added that he could not rule out the possibility that Smit would join the operation this year if Mammoet were to come up with a safe plan and contact his company.
It has been reported repeatedly that money has been the sticking point in negotiations on the lifting.
The secretary of the Kursk Foundation, Rio Praaning, said in a phone interview Thursday that his foundation has raised nothing but the $250,000 it received from the Dutch government for a feasibility study and safety assessment report.
TITLE: Women's Group Warning of Forced Prostitution Abroad
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg women's rights organizations are teaming up with their counterparts in five other Russian cities and towns to raise awareness of the way in which women are lured abroad by the promise of work - only to end up in servitude.
Volunteers here and in Moscow, Nov gorod, Yaroslavl, Petrozavodsk and Nizhny Novgorod, have taken to the streets to distribute leaflets and other information explaining the dangers of human trafficking.
The project, which will last for a month in some cities but was only a day long in St. Petersburg, has been launched by Angel, a 43-member nationwide coalition of nongovernmental women's rights groups.
Each year, around 50,000 women from the former Soviet Union are tricked into becoming sex slaves, according to figures from international law enforcement agencies.
The network of modern-day slavery covers the world, according to reports by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the United Nations and human rights groups. Women are sent to Western Europe, The Middle East, Japan, Canada, and the United States.
The United Nations estimates that profits from trafficking in women reach $7 billion to $12 billion a year, according to an Associated Press report.
In Russia, the problem is exacerbated as more and more women look to escape their home country to find work.
"There is obvious discrimination [on the Russian labor market]," said Vla dimir Chukardin, deputy head of the Leningrad Oblast Social Committee.
"The list of jobs available for women is very small - only about 20 to 25 percent of vacancies - and it's almost impossible for women with small children [to find work]."
As many as 70 percent of women in St. Petersburg between the ages of 18 and 30 would like to work part-time abroad, according to the St. Petersburg-based Institute for Non-Discriminatory Gender Relations.
But when they cross the border, what happens to women is often a disaster - particularly for women of that age. Many are fooled by criminal organizations posing as recruitment bureaus or travel agencies, who take their passports away on arrival, lock them up in brothels and force them to work as prostitutes.
Those who fall victim to the sex trade are afraid to alert the police abroad in case they end up in jail, unable to prove that they were forced into prostitution.
Maria Sagitova, a lawyer for the Gender Relations Institute, said that unlike most Western countries, Russia doesn't have a special article in the Criminal Code against human trafficking.
"There is an article forbidding the buying and selling of children, but if the victim is over 18, the law is helpless," Sagitova said. "Sometimes it is possible to base a case on kidnapping charges, but such cases are rare."
Natalya Khodyreva, director of the institute, said that an added problem was the absence of bilaterial agreements between Russia and other countries which would regulate the situation. Interpol only works with official criminal cases, while the International Red Cross is not involved in people searches.
The Russian government has done little to protect young women from falling for sex-trade scams. Sergei Tarasevich, head of the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Immigration Service, said that the issue must become a priority - particularly given the numbers of women wanting to leave the country. "If things continue as they are, in only 20 years' time there will be half the number of women of child-bearing age in Russia," he said.
The literature Angel volunteers are handing out includes advice on reading contracts arranging work permits abroad, and a hotline (327-30-00) for those wanting more information or victims seeking help.
TITLE: World Bank Extends City Credit
AUTHOR: By Andrey Musatov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: The World Bank has announced it will provide a $150 million credit for reconstruction work in St. Petersburg's city center between 2002 and 2005. Of the new credit, $50 million will be administered through the federal budget, while the remaining $100 million will be channeled to Smolny, but will be conditioned on the adoption by the city of a number of pending property and construction regulations.
This will be the second credit that the city is granted by the bank. In 1997 the city received a credit of about $100 million.
The new loan comes with a 17-year repayment term, which can be extended by another five years under an option clause.
According to Olga Melnikova, a press secretary with the Investment and Construction Fund - the organization established by the city's government to administer programs associated with World Bank credits - the federal part of the loan is targeted at renovations and upgrades to cultural and architectural objects of state significance, including the State Hermitage Museum, Palace Square, the Mariinsky Theater and Teatralnaya Ploshchad, the area in front of the theatre.
"But these are only the four best-known examples on the list," Melnikova said. "The complete list contains a large number of other projects as well."
In total, there are 24 projects listed under the program.
"The federally-administered part of the credits will be for specific projects," she added. "None of this money can be disbursed until the city administration has finished and presented final documentation of the plans."
And to receive the $100 million targeted for Smolny, the city will have to do even more. The agreement requires that the city pass a group of six laws concerning regulation of the city's construction sector and another eight concerning usage of property and land.
"In general, the reforms are aimed at liberalizing the construction and renovation processes," Lev Sovulkin, a senior analyst with the Leontieff economic research center, said Thursday. "They are also intended to remove some of the bureaucratic formalities in the process of documentation approval for projects and allow companies to enter the construction sector more easily."
"It's hard right now to say how long these reforms will take," he added. "If the World Bank conditions the credits on these reforms, then it has to audit the results, which will take time."
"I think these questions, including the timetable, will be discussed in the next few days."
Specifics of the program are to be further ironed out in six days of talks between Smolny and a World Bank mission, which arrived in St. Petersburg on Thursday.
According to Melnikova, if the mission approves the city's reform program and gives the credit, it will be spent on works included in the city's investment program. She couldn't provide specific examples of projects involved.
"The money will definitely go to reconstruction projects in the city's historical center," she said. "Exactly which specific projects will be decided by the city administration."
Funds from the 1997 credit were used in a number of reconstruction projects in the city including the Cappella Courtyards, along the Moika River near the State Cappella, and city block 130, which is bordered by Nevsky Prospekt, Ul. Vosstaniya, Ul. Mayakovskogo and Ul. Zhukovskogo.
One part of the project involved modernization of the utilities infrastructure under Nevsky Prospekt, as well as improving lighting and traffic-control systems, and repaving the sidewalks.
World Bank representatives were unavailable for comment on Thursday but, in a March interview with The St. Petersburg Times, Felix Jakob, project manager for the World Bank's Urban Project in Russia, said that the bank's appraisals of the usage of previous funds was positive and that the city had done a "good job" with the money.
TITLE: Lenenergo's Power Cutoffs Hit 2 More Municipalities
AUTHOR: By Simon Ostrovsky
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Energy shutdowns in two municipalities in the Leningrad Oblast this week led to hurried scuffling to make good on debts to the utility and served to point out some of the social effects the cuts bring with them.
Regional utility Lenenergo continued its policy of cutting off services to debtors this week, shutting down supply of heat and hot water to the Leningrad Oblast municipality of Kirovsk.
In another instance in Ivangorod - located on the Estonia-Russia border - a system that had been installed by Lenenergo to control the amount of electricity that is provided to debtor organizations shut off the power supply to the area.
Lenenergo cut all heating services to Kirovsk, located 30 kilometers to the east of St. Petersburg, on Tuesday. The company cited the local administration's debt of 42 million rubles ($1.5 million) as the reason for the move in a press release issued on the same day.
"Lenenergo has stopped providing free heat and hot water to the Kirovsk network," the release said. The company added that it had made numerous requests to the municipality to clear up the debt, and that the lack of results had led them to take the most recent action.
The next day, the city of Ivangorod was deprived of electrical power.
"Lenenergo partially cut off our electricity through their local energy provider, Kingisepsky Energosbyt, from 10:00 a.m today to 1:30 p.m. today," said Antonia Kostitsina, deputy head of the Ivangorod municipal administration, on Wednesday. "They did this without consulting us in any way."
But it appears that the situation in this case is not so simple.
Natalia Yekifova, a press spokesperson at Lenenergo, blamed energy industry middlemen for the shutdowns and said that Lenenergo understood that the municipality fully intended to make good on its debts soon, though a date had not been set.
"The Ivangorod Electric Network (IES), which buys energy from us at a low price and then sells it to consumers at a higher price, had its energy allowance lowered as a warning measure," Yekifova said Thursday. "They exceeded that limit and an automatic mechanism shut down one of its feeders."
"IES should have shut down electricity to its commercial debtors to avoid activating the automatic shutdown that put ordinary residents in a horrible situation."
As a result of IES' high level of debt to Lenenergo, the utility installed an automatic shutoff system that functions to limit the amount of power it can provide at any one time. A spike in usage on Tuesday morning caused the system to activate.
Although Nikolai Andreyev, director of IES, concedes that his organization is a "horrendous debtor," he claims that it is not possible for him to cut power to just some organizations and not others.
"When our feeder overloaded and the automatic switch off took place, everything connected to it went down," he said Thursday. "But by Thursday evening all power was restored to Ivangorod."
"We came to an agreement with Lenenergo that they would lift the 1200 kilowatt restriction on our feeder for a few days while we pay off the debt."
"The situation is not all bad," he added optimistically. "At least some of our debtors have started paying."
Andreyev said that, since the shutdown, the municipal council has paid 593,000 rubles ($20,200) and has agreed to pay another million rubles ($34,400) on Friday. Another local factory has already shelled out 655,000 rubles ($21,300).
A general stiffening of the policy of Russian power companies toward their debtors was initiated as a result of a June 2000 order from Unified Energy Systems (UES) chief Anatoly Chubais, demanding that the 240 billion rubles (about $ 8.6 billion) owed to the parent firm be paid by its subsidiaries. Lenenergo is one of these subsidiaries.
Power cuts reached their zenith in August of 2000 when debtors throughout the country where blacked out as a warning ahead of the peak-usage winter season.
But the shutdowns have raised ethical questions from those who say that hospitals and other social organizations have been put at risk through the power cuts, and the municipal administration's Kostitsina says that the power loss in Ivangorod provides a good example of the dangers involved.
"On Tuesday, as a result of the power cut, two patients at Ivangorod's only hospital could not have operations," she said. "This could have resulted in their deaths, but we reached an agreement with IES to shut down two of its commercial clients in order to have enough power to provide electricity to the neighborhood where the hospital is."
Utilities shutdowns are nothing new to the border town that faces the Estonian town of Narva. Separated by the Narva River, both cities had much of their infrastructure in common during Soviet times when they where almost one city.
Ivangorod was dependent on Estonian water supplies for its post-Soviet history until 1999, when it built its own infrastructure. Before then, Narva would cut water every now and again when the city wasn't paying its bills. Narva on the other hand, still uses Russian electricity, which is cheaper than that available in most of the rest of Europe.
Although the situation in Kirovsk on Tuesday was less pressing, the cuts in hot water have, in particular, forced some adjustments.
"The municipal administration had a meeting today and it was decided that there will be hot water on weekends only," said Irina Bristyuk, the administration spokesperson.
"Although there are middlemen invoved in many of the cases where energy is sold to municipalities, our debt is owed entirely to Lenenergo," she added.
Workers at the local hospital have already been forced to resort to heating water on stoves.
"These shutdowns happen every year," Gennady Shertnev, the chief physician at Kirovsky Municipal Hospital, said in a telephone interview on Thursday. "If they really are going to shut down the hot water for long, then the hospital will have to invest in electric water heaters."
TITLE: Akvarium Frontman Wins Copyright Ruling
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: A local court has ruled that Russian rock star and frontman for the popular band Akvarium, Boris Grebenshchikov, is entitled to $2,500 compensation as a result of a copyright violation.
Late last month the St. Petersburg City Court turned down the appeal of an earlier decision filed by Atlant Publishing. The company had been ordered by the Leninsky District Federal Court to pay the sum to the artist after it found last fall that Atlant had made improper use of lines from one of Grebenshchikov's songs.
The case dates back to 1999, when Atlant Publishing placed an advertisement in its bulletin Computer Price, containing two lines from Grebenshchikov's 1983 song "Muzyka Serebryannykh Spits," or "The Music of Silver Spokes."
The lawsuit was initially filed on Grebenshchikov's behalf in late 1999, but the singer says that he wasn't very involved in the process.
"Honestly, I don't know anything about it at all - I didn't even know that it was 'Muzyka Serebryannykh Spits,'" Grebenshchikov said by telephone Thursday. "Who used it and for what? - I haven't seen anything. It's all just managerial games."
According to Grebenshchikov, the lawsuit was an initiative of then-Akvarium manager Stanislav Gagarinov and his lawyer, Vasily Tyutin.
"Perhaps it'll be a precedent for somebody - but not for Akvarium, because it's well-known that everybody who contacts me can get any rights to do anything with my songs without any money involved," said Grebenshchikov.
But Tyutin said the decision would have a positive effect.
"Legal practice concerning copyrights is only starting to form now [in Russia], so any decision is quite important and it influences people's attitudes to what's happening and their understanding of their responsibility."
"When we submitted the lawsuit, one of our main tasks was to influence the situation," he added. "Then, there was a total neglect of copyrights, and we were attempting to make [people] respect them."
"There are laws, and they must be obeyed," said Tyutin.
According to Tyutin, the $2,500 award is one of the largest sums recovered under Russian law concerning such cases.
TITLE: Teenagers Showing How To Do Business
AUTHOR: By Torrey Clark
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - "Don't walk past! Shells from the Black Sea! Exclusive to Russia!" called a bespectacled blond teen in a sailor's outfit, his voice swelling as a prospective customer backed toward a competitor's stall.
Although Oleg Ventulin, an 11th-grader from Novorossiisk, may not be making a sale, the young entrepreneur is not seeking to expand market share. And even though his books were checked Wednesday night, he is not trying to increase his profit margin.
His goal is to get his company recognized as having one of the best business ideas, marketing strategies, management and presentation style of any corporation in Russia.
From among a few dozen student-run companies, that is.
Ventulin's venture is one of 32 companies that participated Tuesday and Wednesday in the seventh annual trade fair hosted by Junior Achievement Russia, a division of the U.S. organization set up to teach youth the economics of a free market.
These champions of the free market from around Russia converge in Moscow each year to show off their business prowess. The jury-picked winner then faces off against student companies from other countries.
But the teens say the best part of the program is the challenge of going into business on one's own.
"Their understanding of entrep reneurship, the market and taste is developing all the time," said Yevgeny Velikhov of the Kurchatov Institute, explaining why he brought Junior Achievement to Russia in 1991. "But the most important thing is their initiative."
Determined entrepreneurs from 15 to 18 years old charged up and down the hall of the Park Palace business center on Wednesday with bullhorns, sample trays and irrepressible enthusiasm. Eye-catching national costumes swished past serious suits. In one corner, Santa's elves advertised party-planning services.
Despite the color and energy, students' ability to articulate and market their business ideas lags far behind their technical aptitude, reflecting Russia's problem marketing itself overseas, jurors said. "The overall impression was quite good. ... [But] even when there is a very good product, they can't always present it," said juror Vadim Medvedev of International Research & Exchanges Board.
Other jury members came from Stiles & Riabokobylko, American Express, Citibank, Cargill and USAID.
Student entrepreneurs have to look to themselves for start-up capital, which they get by investing and selling shares in their company for 40 to 60 rubles each. Regional JAR directors help them find sponsors who provide equipment, know-how and office space. A few companies are joint ventures, such as the Veliky Novgorod-based Omega. Students from its partner school in Rochester, New York, have been dependable customers for its birch-bark souvenirs.
Souvenirs or crafts predominated the exhibition, though several companies are involved in services including the Internet, software and promotion. The companies conduct straight-forward market research in selecting the best product or service line. Ideology, especially environmental friendliness, also plays a big role.
The sea-shell souvenirs offered by Nemo, from the Novorossiisk Ecology-Economics High School, aren't just pretty keepsakes, explained Ventulin, the blond teen in the sailor's outfit who is his company's president. They represent the sea life killed by oil spills. Ventulin spoke of the Caspian Pipeline as a looming threat because the pipes could burst.
His company won a prize Wednesday for environmental awareness.
Several teams are veterans of the Moscow competition. "We're here for the third time. ... We make new friends, show what we can do, see what others can do, gain experience," said Tatyana Kurenkova, 15, of the Spirit of the Village of Uglich company.
She is one of a group of orphans who run Matrix, an Internet cafe and pizzeria in Uglich, near Moscow.
"Of course, we couldn't transport the cafe here," said Spirit's JAR teacher Irina Ivanova, explaining the potholders for sale.
Spirit executives said competition is a preparation for life, not a hobby.
"We are learning professions, waitress, bartender. One boy is a computer programmer," said Kurenkova.
Their spirit moved the judges, and they captured this year's prize for the best company at the fair.
Students from the town of Yunost in the Far East no doubt came the farthest of any group this year. They traveled 12 hours by bus from Dalnegorsk to the Vladivostok airport, then embarked on a nine-hour flight to Moscow.
The teens displayed knitted hats and dresses made by themselves and products made by their sponsor, the master class in knit-wear at their school.
But the grand prize went to the Moscow company New Teens, which had the most technologically advanced stand with computers and an overhead projector displaying its graphic software programs. The company has created virtual tours of Red Square for NDF On-line of Germany, a museum for the Academy of Artists and electronic postcards for the portal Kirill and Mefody.
They are currently developing distance learning programs in psychology, ethics and survival training, which enjoy the greatest demand, said Yekaterina Bozhidai, president of New Teens.
Their programs cost $5,000 to $100,000 depending on the complexity, time spent and the detail. The German company paid in kind, with computers worth about $10,000 two years ago.
Barter is not dead in the student economy.
TITLE: Oil Firms Lash Out At Finance Ministry
AUTHOR: By Igor Semenenko
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: After holding their tongues while the Finance Ministry hammered out a tax plan it said wouldn't harm the industry, four of Russia's top oil firms have broken their silence to condemn the ministry's proposals.
"In reality, the Finance Ministry does not lower, but raises the tax burden on oil companies, while at the same time making public statements about lowering taxes," said the text of a joint statement, circulated by LUKoil, Yukos, Sibneft and Tyumen Oil Co., or TNK, Wednesday night.
Over the past two months the government, as part of an attempt to reduce the burden on business, submitted its tax package to the State Duma piecemeal, including laws on corporate profit tax, customs duties, state fees and royalties.
Last summer, the first four chapters of Part 2 of the Tax Code - on value-added tax, excises, income tax and social taxes - sailed through parliament.
The Finance Ministry trumpeted the achievement in its own letter Wednesday, saying that the "submitted draft laws carry the tax reform forward."
But the details of the new changes to the tax code, taken together, have alarmed the oil majors, who say that their profits will drop if prices go up.
Their calculations show that if the average price of a barrel of oil jumps from $17 to $25 per barrel, a 47 percent increase, profits for the whole industry will drop 11.8 percent - from 289 billion rubles ($10.3 billion) to 255 billion rubles.
Oilers complain specifically about the government's plan to increase export duties and excise taxes, as well as the introduction of a royalty tax, which replaces three different existing taxes.
The plan calls for a new royalty tax of 425 rubles on a barrel of oil sold for $17, and 625 rubles at $25 per barrel - currently the tax is 322 rubles if the price is $20.
The government also plans to raise export duties at the high end of the price curve. If oil prices top $32.5 per barrel, for example, the export tax will jump 37.5 percent to 66 euros ($57.70) per ton.
The Finance Ministry defended the moves.
"We are aware of the concerns of oil companies, which try to defend the extra profits they raked in on the tails of the bull run on the global oil market," the ministry said.
It also disagreed with calculations that show a decline in profitability if prices grow.
Earlier this year, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who is also a deputy prime minister, said that taxes on other industries should be lowered at the expense of oil majors. "The oil sector should serve the interests of the budget, the social sphere, the state and should help lower overall tax burden on the industry," he said.
No. 2 producer Surgutneftegaz opted not to join the letter of protest, preferring to remain out of the spotlight.
A Surgutneftegaz official who asked not to be named said that his company's position differed from the other four in that it wants royalties calculated on the basis of the quality of oil wells.
"I would not consider the government's proposals unjustified," said Dmitry Druzhinin, analyst with Prospect brokerage. "Oil in the ground is public property, so it is natural that it is being taxed, especially at a time when the state has to repay huge debts."
TITLE: Trouble Surrounding Aeroflot Leads to Shares Downgrade
AUTHOR: By Lyuba Pronina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Already suffering from a bitter labor dispute, Aeroflot's woes continued Thursday as a major brokerage downgraded the company's shares and a leading global ratings agency said it would "review" its corporate governance rating.
Renaissance Capital said in a research note that it had downgraded Aeroflot to short-term "hold" due to the uncertainty over the ownership of the airline, a potential strike by employees, and a recent surge in share price, which makes it no longer "cheap."
Aeroflot shares dropped 3.9 percent to close at $0.332 on Thursday.
Standard & Poor's said it was concerned about the recent change in ownership at Aeroflot, "whereby one shareholder group may be able to have a blocking minority of more than 25 percent."
Vedomosti reported earlier this month that over 29 percent of the Aero flot's shares had been acquired by companies close to Sibneft tycoon and Chu kotka Governor Roman Abramovich.
S&P said it would review its 5.3 corporate governance score for the airline because "the fact that the name[s] of the new owner[s] is [are] not disclosed has negative implications ... and non-transparency of ownership increases the risk for Aeroflot's minority shareholders."
In March, S&P published its first-ever corporate governance rating for an emerging market company, grading on a scale of one to 10.
The announcements by Renaissance and S&P comes just two days before the company's annual shareholders meeting, where it is expected to be able to boast that it earned a profit for the first time in 2000.
TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: UES Hearing Delayed
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The government has delayed its hearing on the controversial reform of electricity monopoly Unified Energy System by one day until Saturday, the prime minister's spokesperson said Thursday.
Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov's spokesperson Tatyana Razbash did not provide any reason for the delay.
There are two plans for reforming Russia's electricity sector. One has been shepherded through revisions by the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, and is now due to come up for government approval on Saturday.
A second was produced by a Kremlin group set up to ease dissent over the first draft of the plan, based largely on proposals from UES management.
Ruble Sinks Further
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The ruble lost 5 kopecks against the dollar in the key morning session on Thursday to hit a new low following recent remarks by the Central Bank head that the ruble had room for further depreciation, dealers said. The ruble fell even more sharply on the Interbank market and only the Central Bank's dollar intervention prevented it from falling deeper, they said.
The ruble's weighted average edged down to 29.0734 per dollar in a unified session of eight exchanges after 29.0200 per dollar Wednesday.
Based on the results of the unified session, the Central Bank cut its official next-day rate to 29.07 rubles per dollar.
Telecom XXI Rollout
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Mos cow-based Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) President Mikhail Smirnov will be in St. Petersburg next week to announce the plans of Telecom XXI to provide cellular-phone services on the GSM standard in the region.
According to a company press release, Smirnov will announce the completion of the deal, which was first reported in March, to bring Russia's Northwest a second cellular provider. At the time, MTS officials said that their purchase of Telecom XXI still had to be approved by the Antimonopolies Ministry.
Telecom XXI was granted the license in 1998, but never set up operations. North-West GSM is presently the only provider operating on the standard in the region.
TITLE: Mailbox
TEXT:
Dear Editor:
Congratulations on missing the point of NASA's objections entirely [Editorial "NASA's Outrage is Hypocritical," May 8.]
First, I noticed that there is no mention in your opinion piece about the fact that for the last 10 years, the U.S. taxpayer has been burdened by Russia's consistently late and incomplete fulfillment of its obligations regarding Alpha. The people of the U.S. are excited about having the Russians in space as our partners, and so have been very understanding about this as Russia gets its finances in order. However, perhaps NASA expected a little consideration for its patience? There was no issue about Tito going to Mir. It was, after all, a fully functional and proven space platform, whereas the ISS still has no airlock.
Your comparison of Tito's trip to the trip of John Glenn on the shuttle is completely fallacious. John Glenn is a veteran U.S. Senator, and was invited to participate in honor of his years of service to his country, not just because he paid for an expensive amusement ride. Dennis Tito has not earned that distinction. Would the U.S. have objected to having Yury Gagarin grace the ISS with his presence if he had lived to see it? Of course not.
Now, for the underlying reason for all this hot air: perceptions and differences in culture. In the U.S., a person cannot gain access to a high-profile government resource by simply paying for it. It is regarded as bribery to do so. To have access to such things, a person would be invited by an official representative and would somehow be connected with funding, politics or technical aspects of the project. While it is naive to think that defacto bribery does not occur, it would certainly not happen with a high-profile project like the ISS. From the American point of view, Russia again failed to deliver on a promise (a bribe, in fact) to Tito by de-orbiting Mir, then attempted to make up for it by sending him to the ISS where he could potentially put American lives and money at risk while NASA gets nothing. This, after our patience and understanding regarding the last 10 years of funding overruns due to Russia's financial problems. Now, Russia has set a dangerous precedent that personal wealth can buy access to public projects like the ISS. Was it worth $10 million? I doubt it - I don't doubt that Russia will be sorry it set this precedent in the future. Perhaps you can't see it, but Dennis has swindled your country and caused more damage than $10 million to your reputation with his own selfishness. Tito doesn't care about the future of manned space flight - If he did, Dennis would have gracefully declined after seeing the damage done to the program.
I care deeply about humankind's future outside the constraints of Earth. As such, I am disappointed to see Russia-U.S. cooperation set back by something as trivial as a single selfish American millionaire. Perhaps your publication should start looking at the entire drama of space flight and how to advance the cause of all humankind rather than inciting petty nationalism without presenting the other sides of the issue.
Oh, by the way, don't forget to tell your readers that all Americans are greedy, hypocritical and arrogant. Perhaps Mother Russia could use a little nationalism after all, and your editors are certainly leading the way.
Ken Williams
Athens, Georgia
Dear Editor:
Congratulations to everybody involved in Russia being first yet again with developments in space travel. As an Australian with an intense dislike of the effect that U.S. "culture" has on our way of life, it is heartening to see another superpower demonstrating its superiority in a peaceful way. Hopefully we will all live to see the day when the U.S. stops trying to be the global police force and simply goes about putting its own very disorderly and often highly immoral house in order.
To Russians everywhere, congratulations once again - the world needs you to keep moving in your current direction.
Michael Schneider
Adelaide, Australia
Dear Editor:
So Dennis Tito has become a space tourist, breaking the taboo that has held back popular human space flight for so long.
However, Tito will one day be seen as more than an eccentric hobbyist with a dream.
Consider the following: Russia, whose incentive was strictly commercial, is already looking ahead; an adapted Vozdushny air-launched rocket, for instance, or its successor, could launch tourists for less than $5 million, while vehicles such as the U.K. Bristol Spaceplane's Ascender would do far better within 10 years.
The Angara rocket will be more capable and economical than Proton; the first generation of custom-built space hotels will follow soon enough, given Russia's strong desire for commercial success.
Inflatable modules will allow large-volume facilities for new sports and arts.
In time they will have competition from the commercially minded Chinese et al. We expect an eventual if slower fall in prices as Space moves from the province of the Few to the Many. It is fitting that the nation of Tsiolkovsky, Korolyov, and Gagarin should now be pioneering the next steps in cosmonautics.
Short flights will evolve into hotel tours, prolonged cruises, resorts and finally new island settlements. I would expect this to take place in 20-year steps rather than four to five, but the evolutionary path to the humanization of space seems clear enough. Necessity will be served by commerce...
Dr. Michael Martin-Smith,
Hull, U.K.
Dear Editor:
I think that the world should be kinder towards Russia, its problems and President Vladimir Putin. Regarding Gusinsky and Media-MOST, anyone with any common sense will realize that Gusinsky, with his dual nationality, was planning his "milking" way back.
Unlike during Soviet times, Russian citizens have the freedom of travel, and the fact that Gusinsky holds an Israeli passport questions his intent and integrity.
Like the late Robert Maxwell, a British national of Hungarian-Jewish origin who defrauded thousands of poor British pensioners in the biggest bankruptcy in the U.K., the world was too small for him to hide.
Do not feel sorry for Ted Turner or for the Jewish lobby now trying to protect another parasite, Gusinsky.
Do not try to sell out Russian media on the cheap to foreign investors, since in the end the act would be counterproductive.
If Putin were trying to control the free press, he could have found a thousand ways of doing so. Why should Putin allow the activity of the FSB to be publicized so openly if he himself is trying to control the media? It does not make any sense.
I suggest that The St. Petersburg Times concentrate on other activities which might benefit the Russian citizens - such as illegal capital flight, corrupt bank managers, corrupt Russian border guards and customs officials, the illegal export of raw materials, foreign currency by the bundle, etc.
Stephen Lowe
Helsinki, Finland
TITLE: The NMD Lies
AUTHOR: By Michael Mandelbaum
TEXT: ADVOCATES of building a system to defend the United States against an attack by ballistic missiles, to which President Bush has committed his administration, rest their case on two propositions. The first is that without such a system the United States lacks protection against a devastating attack by missiles carrying nuclear warheads. The second is that defense is a purely technical matter.
Neither proposition is true.
The United States already has a three-part policy for preventing missile attacks, consisting of the domestic politics of other countries, international treaties to control the distribution of dangerous technology and most important of all, the American policy of deterrence that has successfully protected the country from nuclear attack for half a century.
This means that in order to enhance American security a missile shield must pass not only a technical but also a political test: It must not undercut these first three lines of defense. Even if it could pass both tests, moreover, such a system would contribute little to the country's security.
Many countries could acquire ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons but have chosen not to do so. The reason is politics. The Japanese, as well as America's allies in Western Europe (except Britain and France), for instance, have forsworn nuclear arsenals because, as democratic, peace-loving countries, they have no use for nuclear weapons except to discourage nuclear attacks by others - a task already carried out for them by the American nuclear force.
Sweeping political changes have made important contributions to the world's nuclear safety. When its apartheid regime fell from power, South Africa abandoned its nuclear-weapons program. The end of the Soviet Union made possible large reductions in the world's total of nuclear armaments. The only certain way to eliminate the threat that "rogue" countries such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq pose to the United States - the threat that forms the basis for the Bush administration's commitment to missile defense - is for governments to come to power that reject the political goals in pursuit of which their current regimes are seeking nuclear weapons.
Politics is America's first line of defense. Although desirable, changes of government in the rogue states do not appear to be imminent. Fortunately, the United States does not have to depend on such changes for its security. It has a second line of defense: the series of international agreements designed to deny nuclear weapons and missiles to countries that want them.
The most important accord is the Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968, the terms of which call for countries without nuclear weapons to promise not to acquire them and for countries with these weapons to pledge not to help any others get them. The treaty and related agreements have a good, although not perfect, record over more than three decades.
The record of America's third and most important line of defense against nuclear missile attack - the policy of deterrence, of threatening crushing retaliation in response to an attack - is perfect. No nuclear shot has been fired in anger since 1945 against the United States or any other country. Deterrence will remain in effect with or without a missile shield. Any country contemplating an attack on the United States must count on a pulverizing response. Firing a missile at North America would be an act of suicide.
Partisans of missile defense claim that against a vicious, perhaps even unbalanced, leader, deterrence could fail. But even a system capable of repelling the kind of small-scale attack that a rogue nation could launch - and years of effort costing $100 billion have thus far failed to produce the necessary technology - could actually make the United States less safe from such an attack if it were to undercut any of the country's first three lines of defense.
The second of them, the agreements to deny dangerous technologies to unreliable countries, is particularly vulnerable. Russia and China have expressed opposition to the American plans for missile defense. In response to an American decision to proceed with a system, which would involve a U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 treaty banning ballistic missile defense, either or both of them could decide to ignore their own commitments under the Nonproliferation Treaty and sell missiles, bombs or both to rogue states.
In that case, the deployment of a missile shield would, perversely and ironically, have increased the nuclear threat to the United States. Moreover, even if the United States deployed the best imaginable defensive system with the blessing of both Russia and China, no U.S. president, faced with a serious threat of a missile attack from a rogue state, would or should rely on that system to protect the United States.
It would be wildly imprudent simply to presume that a complicated ensemble of satellites, rockets and computers, no matter how extensively tested, would work perfectly the first time it was used. The United States would then have to weigh doing what Israel did to the Iraqi nuclear-weapons program in 1982: launch a pre-emptive attack to destroy the threatening weapons before they could be fired.
Thus, under precisely the circumstances for which the Bush administration believes ballistic missile defense to be necessary, the United States would in all likelihood conduct its defense as if it had no missile shield at all.
Michael Mandelbaum is a professor of U.S. foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He contributed this comment to Newsday.
TITLE: It's Too Late To Remake Berezovsky
TEXT: WE are skeptical of Boris Berezovsky's latest attempts to use his checkbook to paper over a decade of self-serving sins that have laid waste to every value he now pretends to hold sacred. Having tracked his machinations for years, we have every right to question Berezovsky's motives, to believe that he continues to put his own interests above all else.
To be honest, we are even skeptical of the oligarch's "opposition" to President Vla dimir Putin.
We have noted that while no effort has been spared to destroy the life and business of Media-MOST founder Vladimir Gusinsky, Berezovsky has quietly sold off his assets - first ORT and, just last week, apparently Aeroflot - to Roman Abramovich.
The contrast of fates between Gusinsky's NTV and Berezovsky's ORT is simply too striking to be ignored, and we can't help but wonder whether Berezovsky's "opposition" party will be funded by Abramovich's money.
Is this what Berezovsky really meant when he told journalists last week that "now, after one year of Putin's presidency, we have the necessary conditions to form a real opposition?"
Our skepticism about Berezovsky's intentions runs so deep, in fact, that it is difficult for us to take at face value his motives for supporting human rights. However, let's just suppose for a moment that his motives are pure.
In that case, Berezovsky should accept that he is an embodiment of all that is wrong with Russian business and politics. Every time average Russians hear his name or see his face, they are prompted to hate the concepts of democracy, open society and market reform that he has done so much to pervert.
Berezovsky's tainted money may indeed, in the right hands, be able to undo some of the harm he has wrought. But Berezovsky himself can do nothing.
If he sincerely wants to help Russia, he should put his money in some unquestionably reliable hands and then vanish, letting Russia and the world forget that he ever existed.
Berezovsky should stop appearing at press conferences, stop commenting on developments in Russia and stop fantasizing that any sincere, liberal-minded person is going to join any political movement that includes him.
If Boris Berezovsky really wants to do something for Russia, he'll let all of us hope and believe that he no longer has anything to do with anything that happens in this country.
TITLE: Citizen Cops:
A Neat Way of Saving Taxes?
TEXT: IF somebody asked me who should keep the city's streets free from hooligans, my answer would be obvious - the police, of course. But Legislative Assembly lawmakers have a different opinion; they say that St. Petersburg residents would be happy to join in themselves, creating volunteer patrol groups.
City deputies are obviously harking back to the Soviet era, when, in the 1970s and '80s, groups of a similar kind were formed from the ranks of almost all the industrial plants and factories throughout Russia to guard the streets. The groups were created then - as is being said now - owing to insufficient numbers of police to deal with street crime.
The most recent attempt to create citizens' patrol groups in the city was made by Veniamin Petukhov, head of the St. Petersburg Police, in January last year - six months after residential buildings were blown up in Moscow by unknown terrorists. The effort ran out of steam when buildings stopped being blown up, and citizens were mollified by the simple appearance of metal doors on residential buildings.
Now, however, there is a different reason why residents must help the police, according to assembly representatives: the increase in numbers of drug addicts in the city, who shoot up in doorways and leave their dirty needles in staircases.
Moreover, lawmakers say, the program has nothing to do with Soviet practice, but rather emulates the neighborhood-watch schemes popular in Western European and North American suburbia.
"It is a well-known fact that the number of drug addicts has grown significantly in the city over the last few years. We should give the local population an opportunity to protect their staircases," Alexander Kustchak, assembly lawmaker and the draft law's author, told me. "I would be happy to have a person on my building's staircase who would be there to keep an eye out for such things."
In Moscow, a similar law was introduced in 1993, and last year over 12,500 people patrolled the city's districts armed with sticks. But did Moscow become any safer? Of course not.
The St. Petersburg budget is more modest than Moscow's, of course. Despite having no legitimate basis for the idea at the moment - just Petukhov's wishful thinking - City Hall is going to spend 100,000 rubles to support the public groups' activity.
Police spokesperson Igor Udimov said that the assistance of volunteers is very useful, since there are insufficient policemen to patrol the city. So just who were all those people who stood along the central streets of St. Petersburg when President Vladimir Putin visited the city recently? There were thousands of men in blues uniforms, standing just 10 meters apart from each other. Kustchak, working together with City Hall on the draft law, said he hopes that there will be more money to pay volunteers provided by the 2002 budget if the law is introduced.
But it seems a strange way of spending money. Arkady Kramarev, former head of the City Police and now a lawmaker, once told me that the police in St. Petersburg have had to impound lots of police cars in dire need of repair. The cars remain in precinct courtyards thanks to a lack of money for spare parts. Would not it be better to spend more money - taxpayers' money - to finance the activity of the police? Or is this an elaborate and rather deceitful way of economizing?
TITLE: No More U.S. Stifling of Putin
AUTHOR: By Jim Hoagland
TEXT: THE stiffing of Vladimir Putin by George Bush is about to end. The American president is preparing to sit down with the Russian leader and begin a dialogue on the future of arms control.
A sense filters out of the White House that four months of openly rebuffing Putin's eager appeals for a one-on-one meeting accomplished a purpose: The stage is set for a brief Russian-American summit that will essentially be conducted on Bush's terms.
Bush aims at a foreign policy goal that eluded Bill Clinton's best efforts - to win Russian acquiescence in overriding treaty limits to the development of a defensive system that would destroy incoming ballistic missiles.
The president appears to have settled on a complex, indirect strategy that will avoid both an outright renunciation of existing arms-control agreements and a picking up of Clinton's efforts to negotiate treaty amendments with Moscow.
Instead, Bush will seek "informal agreements" with the Russians on ways to move out of the Cold War's nuclear posture and rationales, aides indicate. That effort will be Topic A at the Bush-Putin summit, which could come as early as mid-June, when Bush pays his first official visit to Europe.
"It is now a matter of calendars," not of calculation or reluctance, a U.S. official says. Agreement in principle on an early meeting was reached during a recent visit to the White House by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin, who saw Vice President Dick Cheney.
Bush's May 1 statement on nuclear strategy, which underlined his determination to build a comprehensive missile defense for the United States, its allies and friends, elicited an essentially positive public response from Putin - leaving both Bush's domestic critics and European allies who have been critical of missile defense dangling from a limb.
Briefing European diplomats in Brussels last week, a senior Bush official made clear that the time has arrived for a U-turn in Russian-American relations, which have been marked by spy expulsions and harsh rhetoric on both sides.
"Engaging" Russia in a search for mutual understandings on post-Cold War nuclear strategy is a U.S. priority now, Steve Hadley reportedly told NATO ambassadors in Brussels last week. Formally deciding the fate of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and of arms control in general is "secondary," Bush's deputy national security adviser added.
Bush diplomacy - under assault on a number of fronts recently as an oxymoron - has actually been effective in pursuing a new framework for relations with a diminished but still important Russia and in defusing European concerns about his clear withdrawal of support for the ABM Treaty.
After long discussion with aides, the president appears to have decided to avoid at least for now the furor that a formal renunciation of the 1972 strategic document would bring. Instead, he will walk away from it a step at a time.
As research and development brushes up against the treaty's limitations, Putin will be forced into a trifecta of choices: cooperate in a quiet mutual fade-away; noisily complain but stop short of a formal challenge; or invalidate the accord on the grounds of U.S. violations.
There is a precedent for the complain-but-tolerate option: In the Reagan administration, U.S. officials argued with themselves and Moscow over whether the building of a Soviet battle management radar at Krasnoyarsk was a treaty violation. Washington made no formal challenge. In 1989, as the Cold War ended, the Russians admitted that the radar had in fact been a violation of the treaty. Bush will also have to overcome Pentagon resistance to shifting resources from the uniformed services' needs.
"You want to keep the possibility alive that nobody has to walk out of the treaty, and that you can actually use it to move to a new relationship with Russia," says one Bush adviser.
Clinton saw it the other way: He sought to use the Russian relationship to save the ABM Treaty and preserve the arms-control framework of the Cold War. But time ran out on that approach. In one of his last meetings in the Oval Office, a plaintive Clinton asked two senior aides: "Why wouldn't they make that deal with me?"
Putin preferred to wait and see what he could work out with a new administration. After four frustrating months of delay, he will soon have his chance.
Jim Hoagland is a columnist for The Washington Post, to which he contributed this column.
TITLE: Gazprom Vs. Ukraine: Chernomyrdin Wins
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: "WELL, finally. Now they'll pay us for our gas," was what most of the media had to say when news broke that former prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin had been named ambassador to Kiev. And, indeed, Ukraine presently owes Gazprom $2.2 billion.
However, common sense tells us that not all of this money is really properly described as "debt." In fact, one could even argue that none of it is. Let me illustrate with a concrete example, the story of Rospan.
For the last few years, Gazprom has held a controlling stake in Rospan, which has been developing the enormous Eastern Urengoi gas field. Rospan approached Gazprom for money to pay off its suppliers, but instead of cash, the company was given 2 billion cubic meters of gas.
Of course, Rospan couldn't sell this gas itself, so Gazprom instructed it to use Itera. Itera is an offshore company registered in Jacksonville, Florida, to which Gazprom transferred - among other things - the exclusive right to sell gas in Ukraine. Itera sold Rospan's gas and - surprise! - Itera's Ukrainian customers never paid for it. Naturally, Itera never paid Rospan.
Subsequently, though, Itera found enough money to buy up Rospan's debts and to begin bankruptcy proceedings against the company. Some cynics have suggested that Itera bought up Rospan's debts with the money it received by selling Rospan's gas. At the very least, the authorities should be asking why Itera sold Rospan's gas without receiving payment.
But there's the rub. You see, Gazprom conducts all its transactions within the former Soviet Union in rubles, while the controlling organs only verify transactions conducted in hard currency. Only the tax inspectorate is interested in ruble transactions, and it is only interested in making sure that proper duties are paid. If no money is actually paid, the tax authorities are not interested.
The price of Ukrainian transit gas is inflated. And they pay for this insanely overpriced gas using insanely overvalued barter arrangements.
The central press has lauded the Kremlin for the Chernomyrdin appointment. Izvestia wrote that it "is a genuinely extraordinary presidential idea," "original" and "effective." But Ambassador Chernomyrdin is not likely to improve Russia's position so much as to place limits on the appetites of one of the Gazprom clans - the one that shelters and nurtures the all-powerful Itera.
Therefore, it is best to interpret the appointment as a victory for Chernomyrdin personally and as another stage in the struggle within Gazprom, for Gazprom.
And, considering the example of Pavel Borodin, Chernomyrdin may find that having a diplomatic passport is a handy thing, too.
Yulia Latynina is a journalist for ORT.
TITLE: Global Eye
TEXT: Red Menace You can accuse America's religiopolitical fundamentalists of many things, but an excess of incredulity is definitely not one of them. That fact was on vivid display last week as Christian warriors throughout the land unleashed a massive prayer blitz to save their fellow fundo George W. Bush from being killed - by an ancient American Indian curse.
This occult warfare was launched by our old friend, Pat Robertson, on CBN, his nationwide cable network. Robertson, who once accused Bush the Father of being part of the Jewish-Masonic-Rotarian conspiracy to enslave the world, now sits happily at the right hand of the Son as He, the Chosen One (chosen by the Supreme Court, anyway) prepares to dole out millions in tax dollars to leaders of "faith-based organizations" like, er, well, Pat Robertson.
With that kind of dosh on the line, Robertson urged viewers to pray that Bush be shielded from a curse allegedly laid on the American presidency by the Indian chief Tecumseh (or his brother, or both of them, or neither, according to which gospel you consult). Supposedly, the Indians cursed General William Henry Harrison for defeating them at the battle of Tippecanoe in 1811; when he ran for president in 1840, they said he would die in office, and so would every other president elected at 20-year intervals.
And the fact is, every president elected at 20-year intervals since 1840 has died in office, except 1980 alumnus Ronald Reagan. However, the story of the "curse" did not start popping up on those far fringes where Yeti range with Elvis in space ships above Loch Ness until a few decades ago - perhaps to explain, after the fact, the oddly rhythmic presidential mortality rate. And there is no historical evidence of what Robertson calls "the written prophecy" - except for an 1836 play about the great chief, in which he is depicted on his deathbed leveling a non-specific curse against Harrison.
But as Reagan himself once famously said: "Facts are stupid things." So there was Robertson, calling on the Lord to avert the curse from the small round head of the Appointed One. Reagan was saved through a similar effort, it seems, but the demonic power of the heathen red man is "still effective" - unless there is sufficient tongue-wagging toward Heaven.
No doubt the campaign will prove effective, and George W. will live out his term in faith-based comfort and safety. There's just one slight problem, however: Isn't Dick "Four Heart Attacks" Cheney the real president?
Better not tell Tecumseh!
White Heat
Speaking of crack-brained conspiracy theorists who have infiltrated and corrupted a once-great political party under the cover of conservative "Christianity," the chairman of the Republican National Committee - who moonlights as the governor of Virginia when he's not toting W.'s water - found himself in a spot of bother last week after proudly signing a proclamation authored by white supremacist David Duke.
Governor Jim Gilmore proclaimed May "European American Heritage and History Month" at the request the "National Organization for European-American Rights," AP reports. But apparently no one on the governor's staff checked out the group's Web site, where they would have been led to bilious rantings about "Why Most Negroes Are Criminals," the "genetic superiority" of white Christian chromosomes, and, of course, "Jews, Jews, Jews: How the Jews Really Do Control the Mass Media."
Duke, you recall, is the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who has attempted to take white supremacy "into the mainstream" by ditching the pointy hoods for designer suits and by joining, er, the Republican Party, where he has been a major player in Louisiana for years. But evidently his fellow Republican had never heard of Duke's organization - although some cynics said Gilmore's quick embrace of "European-American heritage" was an attempt to appease the anger of right-wingers at an earlier proclamation that dared honor soldiers who fought on both sides in the Civil War.
At any rate, Gilmore revoked the proclamation last week - after the Duke connection was made public by reporters. Gilmore also promised he would be more careful in the future about getting involved with dubious figures who make a great show of religious piety in order to hide their brutal policies and ruthless lust for power.
Guess he won't be going up to the White House anytime soon.
Blue Meanies
Of course, one of the major concerns of moral crusaders like Pat, Dave and the Oval Occupant is sexual morality. The campaign of the Christian Right to stamp out bodily perversion has borne remarkable fruit in America, where almost every single aspect of human behavior has been relentlessly sexualized and is now ripe for policing by the professionally pious.
An exaggeration, you say? Then consider the good folk at Marissa Elementary School in St. Louis, Missouri. Last week, school officials called the police to remove parent Susan Jones from the premises after she - prepare yourself, this is really nasty - after she - and we apologize for bringing such filth into your homes - after she hugged and kissed her son.
Jones had been attending a regular kindergarten breakfast program for parents and their young children. But school officials said Jones was "engaging in inappropriate physical contact" with her flesh-and-blood. The wanton hussy "held her son in her lap" (for shame!) then "she hugged, kissed and fed him." Later, she was observed "lying on her back" with the child on top of her, where again, there was that smooching of progeny so displeasing to the Lord.
Jones was ordered to "refrain from any physical contact with her son during her visits to school." When her lips strayed to the boy's cheek the next day, school officials called in the cops, who took Jones away and warned her that she would be arrested and jailed if she ever came to see her son at school again.
Surely we will all sleep better tonight knowing that such sentinels of morality - backed up by the armed power of the state - are keeping diligent vigil in the land of the free.
TITLE: verdi opera as vaudeville
AUTHOR: by Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Being a versatile director takes more than just natural talent. It takes a true concerted effort. This was all too evident in Andrei Konchalovsky's second opera production, Verdi's "Un Ballo in Masche ra," which failed to demonstrate a new angle or a fresh approach.
The production premiered in Verdi 's hometown of Parma on Jan. 31, 2001, and was slammed by the local press, with the director even getting loud boos from the audience. Last Sunday saw its first performance in St. Petersburg at the Mariinsky Theater, where the reaction was somewhat more enthusiastic.
Act One, in particular, was simply vulgar. It is unfortunate that the director couldn't find anything better to keep the viewers' attention than to have the corp de ballet lifting their skirts up to their ears. It is also regrettable that he decided that can-can dancing, cabaret-style, was the best way to direct actors' moves. In a way, this production tells you much about the director's taste. Any underlying concept to dictate the acting was sadly lacking.
The chorus moved in time with the orchestra, as though they were singing at a party. Certain mise en scenes are perpelexing. The son of Amelia and Renato moves on his rocking horse in time with the orchestra, while conspirators argue for the right to kill Richard.
In a similar vein, Konchalovsky brought in some new characters, such as a dwarf who made frequent stage appearances just to run around or polish someone's shoes.
Not only were these characters unnecessary and irrelevant to the plot, but they were extremely irritating. And not just to the viewers. The "assistant" magician who was suspended from the ceiling behind Ulrika was apparently imitating her moves, and she had to push him back when he got in her way. Obviously, Konchalovsky's goal was to make this graceful work a light entertainment. It is sad to realize that all this inventiveness added nothing to the production whatsoever.
In general, the direction lacked the delicacy and subtlety which Verdi deserves. What Konchalovsky offered instead was a cabaret approach. But it is hard to explain why anyone would want to turn Verdi into vaudeville, which is in effect what he did.
What did make the opera's visual side intriguing were the very successful sets by Italian designer Ezio Frigerio, who decorated the stage with the skeletons of ships surrounded by brick walls.
Musically, the opera was also a success in spite of the incessant annoyances on stage. The Mariinsky symphony orchestra put on an impressively nuanced, almost flawlessly prepared work demonstrating an immediate rapport with Valery Gergiev. The performances of Sergei Murzayev (Renato), Marianna Tarasova (Ulrika) and Olga Trifonova (Oskar) made for the evening's highlights. Trifonova, one of the theater's most promising young singers, with a remarkably pure modulating soprano, was inspiration personified. Tarasova's Ulrika had the desired power, while Bolshoi theater soloist Murzayev was an extremely convincing Renato from both an artistic and vocal point of view.
This summer, the Mariinsky will tour Covent Garden with its renditions of Verdi's works, including Un Ballo in Maschera. And while the vocal and musical resources of the company promise rave reviews - Larisa Dyadkova in the role of Ulrika alone would give opera lovers much to admire - it is unlikely that Konchalovsky's work will get such a warm welcome.
Un Ballo in Maschera will play next on June 22. For more information, call the Mariinsky ticket office at: 114-43-44.
TITLE: chernov's choice
TEXT: The weekend's good alternative entertainment will start at Moloko, where the two-day Club Sputnik Festival will take place on Friday and Saturday.
Headlined by the Helsinki band Aavikko, the event will feature Finnish, Iceland and local acts, mostly specializing in electronic music styles.
Partying will continue at Faculty, where Kirpichi will play on Friday, while Saturday will see an all-night event organized by the ska-punk band Spitfire. After Spitfire's live show, frontman and drummer Denis "Kashchei" Kuptsov will appear as a DJ.
It looks like the most monstrous event is taking place on Sunday, when Yury Shevchuk of DDT will premier what he calls the First Russian Rock Ballet.
Titled "I Was Given This Role" - hinting at the divine nature of Shevchuk's work - it is staged by the Russian National Ballet of Cherepovets (somewhat amusing in itself) and is part of the Days of the Vologda Oblast in St. Petersburg.
"We wanted to say something new in this direction," says Shevchuk in a press release. "I can define my personal state after I saw it with one word - 'shock.'"
As to foreign tour news, Red Snapper and Eric Burdon have fallen victim to St. Petersburg's trademark show biz disease - both have been dropped by local promoters, who reportedly had sudden doubts whether the acts would draw enough fans.
Just like with Stereolab, whose St. Petersburg show was canceled, Red Snapper will perform only in Moscow - see them at the Tochka club on June 22.
Fortunately, this is not the case with Tindersticks, whose local show is likely to become a spectacular open-air event somewhere on Vasilievsky Ostrov - not at the inconveniently located Vyborgsky Palace of Culture as initially planned.
Moscow music writers are now trying to get audiences excited, pinning the band to all-time Russian favorite Nick Cave - some going so far as to describe Tindersticks as "post-Cave." Earlier this month the same bunch was attempting to put Stereolab into the trendy "easy-listening" basket. The band's new album, "Can Our Love...," is due on May 21.
Tindersticks will play St. Petersburg on June 19 and Moscow club Tochka on June 21.
As if in answer to the question which appeared in this space earlier this month, the new, second-edition posters advertising Procol Harum's local show do in fact list the band's current lineup. The band is now comprised of Gary Brooker, Matthew Fischer, Geoffrey Whitehorn and Mark Brzezicki.
Fischer is the man who played Hammond organ on the band's first three records and was largely responsible for Procol Harum's sound in the 1960s.
Finally, there's more good news. The Eagles will not be bringing their "Hotel California" routine to this city, instead limiting their Russian activities to one concert in Moscow on May 29.
- by Sergey Chernov
TITLE: zazerkalye triumphs
AUTHOR: By Giulara Sadykh-zade
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: For the Zazerkalye Theater to put on a production of Giacomo Puccini's "La Bohème" might seem strange, given that the Zazerkalye is supposed to be a children's theater, the kind of place that moms and dads bring their children to broaden their minds.
But in fact the Zazerkalye is a family theater, which is why its repertoire takes the risk of combining children's and adults' music: from the Chinese folk tale "Nightingale" to Gaetono Donizetti's "L'Elisir d'Amore."
Alongside the occasional morning show, children's operas written by St. Petersburg composers of various generations, and humorous, quasi-horror stories, the shows for grown-ups slot into the repertoire of the theater with ease.
Apart from the above-mentioned "L'Elisir d'Amore," the Zazerkalye stages Igor Stravinsky's "The Soldier's Tale," Jacques Offenbach's "Tales of Hoffman" - and now, of course, the new production of "La Bohème," which is a noticeable move in a new artistic direction on the part of the theater.
"La Bohème" is a tricky opera to put on, if only because everyone else does it as well. Most productions are traditional, because for some reason no one wants to do away with the usual "bohemian" flavor: the same old skylights in the same old artist's attic, the gray skies of Paris, and the huge stove in the middle of the stage.
Alexander Petrov's version, in conjunction with the excellent theater designer Alexander Orlov, has completely rejected this visual model. The stove has been moved to one side and brought to the footlights, the skylight, made out of smoked glass, is now on the floor, sealing off the orchestra pit. From the pit shines a white light that softly illuminates the faces of the protagonists at the most lyrical or dramatic points of the opera. Otherwise, everything is starkly and vividly presented, using only pure colors and clear forms rather than subtle tones or blurred outlines.
The stage is open right to the back, and in the corners one can see picture frames and their canvasses, except that instead of the "Parting of the Red Sea" as one is used to, there are paintings more in the style of Malevich or Mondrian - the kind of geometric patterns that are also to be seen on the costumes. This helps unify the visual side of the production.
The thrust of Orlov's scenography, however, is the golden spiral staircase that rises from the center of the stage right to the flies, as if showing the way to heaven. Coming down, we see the conductor, Pavel Bubelnikov, descend with great ceremony.
In total silence, he dons a colorful sleeveless jacket over his black shirt - and thus begins Puccini's tale of love and death.
The orchestra has been placed right at the back of the stage, making the conductor a part of the action. The characters sing and act in the avant-scene, which heightens their presence in the auditorium, and although they never see the conductor, this does not in any way prevent a clear and precise ensemble. The performance of the musicians under Bubelnikov is impeccable, and allows the vocalists - liberated from the tyranny of the baton - to get freely into their roles, move around and interact without breaking rhythm.
And while the interpretation of Puccini was a trifle affected, it was certainly professional: The orchestra sounded magnificent (and more lively than usual), and the tempos and the slightly forced style of singing gave the production its feeling of drive.
All the main roles were well performed, including Yevgeny Akimov, who had recently sung Rudolfo at the Mariinsky Theater with fair success; and Tatyana Serzhan, a talented singer just starting out on her career with a voice that, although not strong, is lyrical and tender - so the role of Mimi suited her down to the ground.
It is also pleasant to see that the singers were as young as the characters they portrayed, and that Petrov has used these fresh voices to breathe new life into the company.
In addition, he is bringing talented singers to the public eye - hence Akimov's stint at the Mariinsky, where he learned a good chunk of the tenor repertoire. We do not know how many more young singers will graduate to the big time from the Zazerkalye, but one can guess that there will be many more yet to come.
TITLE: saying good-bye to three retards
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Don't ask for Tri Debila in kiosks and shops - the recent album of Sergei Shnurov's "more intimate" project is on sale as Leningrad's latest output, as part of the marketing strategy of the band's label. Called "Made in Zhopa," the album was subtitled "Tri Debila Play Leningrad's Unknown Songs," but Moscow-based Gala Records put "Leningrad" in large type at the top of the cover.
The move is supposed to raise sales in view of the current popularity of Leningrad, whose online video broadcast from a Moscow club on May 12 was watched by an estimated 1.5 million viewers.
The spin-off band, which made its stage debut as 3D, or Tri Debila (Three Retards), at Manhattan/Kotel in June 2000, was conceived as a vehicle for songs that Shnurov felt were not quite appropriate for Leningrad. Additionally, the group was better suited for smaller venues, since Leningrad had started to attract more fans than most clubs could hold.
For the past 12 months Shnurov has been confusing audiences by appearing as Leningrad, Tri Debila, and solo, which led promoters to invent the description "Classic Leningrad."
Shnurov describes Leningrad's latest local performance at the packed Lensoviet Palace of Culture on May 1 as his best concert ever. "There was a lot of energy, emotionally it was a great concert," he says about the show, which resulted in fights both inside and outside the venue.
"I even understand why there were fights there - the venue doesn't allow for the release of emotions during the concert. Many people absorbed the energy which was coming from the stage, but failed to pour it out. That's why they fought."
Boris Grebenshchikov of Akvarium has recently criticized Leningrad a number of times, saying that "when given freedom, Russians have immediately chosen a blend of punk and criminal songs."
However, Shnurov is not bothered by such comments. "A man who has taken on the responsibilities of a guru and teacher must evaluate every new phenomenon. Even if he were right [in his definition of our music] - although he's not - it wouldn't a bad thing anyway," says Shnurov. "It doesn't annoy me at all."
Disrespectful of the big names of Russian rock, Shnurov has occasionally taken shots at Akvarium - such as with the song "I am Acting BG" ("Ya i.o. BG"), or by putting a dot over the letter "A" in the name of "Tri Debila" on the album's cover, which is a reference to Akvarium's logo.
"You can't help noticing [widespread phenomena such as] rain or the president of the country," says Shnurov. "It doesn't mean you like him, but you have your own attitude toward him. It doesn't mean I am an Akvarium fan, though I listened to it as a teenager. All in all, groundbreaking music is music for young people."
The album was recorded live at the inexpensive local Neva Studios in March and April 2001, with some guitar and accordion tracks overlaid later.
Much of the album refers to criminal themes, evoking Leningrad's early period, but such songs as "V klube modnom," "Ekh Raz, Yeshche Raz" and "Parnishka" actually date back to the band's obscure early years and were sung at Leningrad's club gigs by the former singer Igor Vdovin.
The album's tentative title was "Robot Militseisky" (an allusion to "Robocop"). "Then when I listened to how it was recorded, 'Made in Zhopa' seemed a better title," Shnurov says.
Typically abundant in ironic quotes, the album's songs allude not only to Alla Pugachova, Kino and Markshcheider Kunst, but also to Tom Waits, whom Shnurov lists among his major influences.
"Hello to Tom Waits," a parody surf number, with Shnurov pronouncing some English words, was conceived as a parallel to the quasi-Russian "Russian Dance" from Waits' 1993 album "Black Rider."
"So it sounds as if Tom Waits' song is saying hello to me," he says.
For Shnurov his new album seems to mean a farewell to Tri Debila, though he admits he will continue to play occasional solo concerts at clubs.
"At recent concerts, I overcame the fear of big stages, and I can create a club atmosphere in any venue," he says. "I don't need Tri Debila anymore - I can get the same effect on huge stages now."
The album is released in two versions, the "cheap" one with 12 tracks and the "expensive" one which bears 15 tracks. Badly recorded counterfeit tapes can be recognized by the word Gruppa before the name "Leningrad."
Leningrad's next concert will take place at SpartaK on June 1.
TITLE: the quest for authenticity
AUTHOR: by Simon Patterson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: For those in search of a good cheap dining experience, there can be few places more suitable than Tinye, a Chinese restaurant that recently opened on Konnogvardeisky Bulvar, not far from St. Isaac's Cathedral. Their prices are so reasonable, in fact, that people even come in off the street to buy beer there - at 20 rubles a bottle, some nearby drinkers probably couldn't find anywhere more suitable to pick up a cold beer on a balmy May evening.
We were the only people in the place at around 7 p.m. on a Wednesday, apart from the occasional beer purchaser, and were served faster than we were able to eat.
The meal began with a complimentary pot of green tea, a pleasant feature that we haven't encountered in any other of the city's numerous Chinese eateries. We found the drinks menu to be a true bargain. I opted for a vodka and tonic at 35 rubles, a strong concotion that was more than enough to last me through the whole meal, while my dining companion had a bizarre-sounding mix of white wine and pineapple juice, also at 35 rubles, which apparently tasted better than it sounded.
The decor at Tinye is unremarkable, a white tiled room with appropriate Chinese artworks on the walls, and with fairly ghastly pop music playing on the stereo. One of the more endearing features, however, is a large table with a Lazy Susan in true Chinese restaurant fashion. Generally, Tinye is better on the authentic side of things than most Chinese restaurants in St. Petersburg - they don't give you any bread, for one thing, and provide chopsticks along with the knife and fork, not always a given in this part of the world.
We began with the "mixed soup" at 50 rubles, which contained carrots, cucumbers and pork, a pleasant if bland start to the meal, with more than enough for two. The portions are all similarly generous, and all listed in weight, with the Wu Li fish, for example, weighing in at a mighty 600 grams.
We opted for the spicy fish, at 108 rubles, served with ginger and spring onions, the Caucasian beef at 100 rubles, and the eggplant with garlic at 98 rubles, along with two generous side orders of fried rice. While three dishes would normally make an ample if not excessive meal, the size of the portions took us somewhat by surprise, and we were unable to finish everything.
The fish was certainly the highlight, while the Caucasian beef made an interesting geographical diversion from the Chinese fare, even if it seemed to bear a striking resemblance to a standard fried Chinese beef dish. We were already struggling with the beef when the eggplant arrived, and were not really in a position to do it justice, though it did seem to be very generous on the garlic.
After this feast, we were surprised to find the bill did not even exceed the 500-ruble mark. And fortunately, Tinye doesn't believe that Chinese food has to be stodgy and loaded with MSG - a short walk along the leafy, beer-drinker-lined boulevard to Ploshchad Truda was enough for us to walk off our meal.
Tinye, 5 Konnogvardeisky Bulvar, 312-52-36. Open daily, 12 p.m. to 11 a.m. Dinner for two with alcohol, 491 rubles ($17).
TITLE: 'Passion' Gets the Best of Deputy PM
AUTHOR: By Robert Barr
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON - Prime Minister Tony Blair said Thursday that it would have been better if his deputy had not punched a heckler, but gave his colleague a strong endorsement as a man who "cares passionately about his politics."
Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, encountering a rowdy group of demonstrators Wednesday in Wales, threw a left jab to the jaw of a man who apparently had thrown an egg. The two burly men then wrestled, and Prescott was pushed down on a wall before police and others intervened.
With the punch-up dominating newspaper front pages and repeating on television newscasts, political leaders were divided between taking it very seriously and laughing it off as the human response of a pugnacious politician.
Roseanna Cunningham, deputy leader of the Scottish National Party, said Prescott should be suspended from duty while police investigate.
"Protesters shouldn't throw eggs, but under no circumstances should any politician, especially the deputy prime minister, throw punches," she said.
Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats, Britain's third-largest party, was more forgiving.
"Everybody knows that John Prescott has a rumbustious temperament - I think journalists know that more than most. But I don't think we should read too much into this incident," Kennedy said.
Prescott, 62, who as a seaman fought in shipboard boxing exhibitions, even winning a cup once, called the incident "frightening and regrettable" Thursday but didn't apologize for the punch.
News reports said more than 30 protesters had gathered Wednesday outside a theater where Prescott was to speak.
"As I got off the bus, I could see it was a potentially dangerous situation," Prescott said.
"I walked through the crowd, following the police through a very narrow pathway, and suddenly felt a blow to the side of my head - I did not know what it was. I responded to defend myself in this melee and I tried to get away as soon as possible from the incident."
Prescott's target, 29-year-old Craig Evans, was released on bail after being questioned by police.
"Of course it's regrettable the whole incident has happened," Blair said at the Labor Party's news conference Thursday.
"But as he points out, I would ask you to bear in mind he was going into a situation that was very difficult - something whacked him on the side of the head and he reacted instinctively. He cares about his country. He cares passionately about his politics. John is John. ... I am lucky to have him as a deputy," Blair said.
Reg Gutteridge, a retired TV boxing commentator, said Prescott's punch was unimpressive.
"He wouldn't know the difference between a coat hook and a left hook," Gutteridge said. "But I think that if people throw an egg at you, then you are entitled to react."
TITLE: WORLD WATCH
TEXT: Plane Crash Kills 29
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - A plane carrying Iran's transport minister and six parliament members crashed Thursday in northern Iran, killing all 29 people on board, the Interior Ministry said.
After disappearing early Thurs day, the plane was located several hours later in the mountains between Gorgan and Shahroud, about 320 kilometers northeast of Tehran, a ministry official said.
Transport Minister Rahman Dadman and his delegation were on their way to Gorgan to inaugurate the city's airport, the local governor said on state television.
Philippines Election
MANILA (Reuters) - Vote counting in the Philippines dragged into a third day amid tight security on Thursday with no clear winner emerging in the race for control of the Senate.
With an estimated 28.6 percent of votes counted, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's hopes of a crushing victory in Monday's legislative and local elections looked like being frustrated by supporters of her detained predecessor Joseph Estrada.
Partial, unofficial results made available by a private poll counting body showed Arroyo's People Power Coalition on course to win eight of the 13 Senate seats being contested.
Estrada's Power of the Masses party was on course to win four seats with an independent candidate likely to take the last.
Arroyo needs nine to ensure a solid majority in the 24-seat house.
Sinn Fein Won't Sit
BELFAST, Northern Ireland (Reuters) - Sinn Fein, the IRA's political ally, vowed on Thursday that its politicians will not swear loyalty to the British monarch or sit in parliament if Northern Ireland voters elect them in Britain's June 7 general election.
But, stepping up pressure on the British government, it declared it wants to use office facilities at the House of Commons that have been closed to its two parliamentarians.
Sinn Fein - in the shadow of the Irish Republican Army while war raged but now pivotal to Northern Ireland's peace process - has a long-standing policy of refusing to give allegiance to the sovereign, which parliamentarians must do to be allowed to sit in the chamber of the Westminster parliament.
Gerry Adams, campaigning for re-election as an "abstentionist" MP, reaffirmed the dogma at a news conference but, in comments likely to ignite fury from the province's pro-British unionist parties, said Sinn Fein was aiming, for the first time, to use the parliament's resources.
Clashes in Macedonia
SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) - Clashes blamed on ethnic Albanian rebels erupted Thursday in the hours before a government-imposed deadline expired, suggesting that the insurgents were planning to fight on despite threat of a massive counterattack.
President Boris Trajkovski had urged the rebels to lay down their weapons by noon Thursday. Front lines were quiet as the deadline passed, and civilians were seen fleeing the area.
But there were indications the rebels would not heed the government demand. The militants opened fire early Thursday at government units from the northern villages of Slupcane and Opae, close to Kumanovo, Army Colonel Blagoja Markovski said.
The clashes were the most serious attacks since the fighting began two weeks ago in the region bordering the Serb province of Kosovo, he said.
Strike in Greece
ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek trade unionists, furious at government plans to reform its creaking pension system, shut down much of the country on Thursday leading thousands of shouting protesters onto the country's streets.
Buses, taxis, trolley buses and the Athens metro ground to halt, turning the capital's normally frenetic streets into relatively traffic-free zones.
Government agencies, schools, and newspapers were closed. Banks and hospitals struggled with skeleton staff. Ferry boats remained in dock.
A raucous demonstration wound its way through central Athens after union leaders delivered fiery speeches demanding the government finance the troubled state pension funds.
Thursday's action was the second general strike in less than a month.
Arafat Denounces Israel
JERUSALEM (AP) - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Thursday accused Israel of escalating military operations against the Palestinians, calling it part of a plan to force his people to "kneel down."
Arafat's remarks came hours after Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen traded fire in a pre-dawn shootout in the southern Gaza Strip, leaving four Palestinian civilians wounded, including a 63-year-old man, officials said.
The Israeli army said its forces responded to fire from a Palestinian house in the town of Khan Yunis. The Palestinian man, Nasser Abu Shanab, was hit in the chest and seriously wounded, according to Palestinian security officials.
Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered the Rafah refugee camp in another part of southern Gaza on Wednesday, flattening agricultural land and firing tank shells, Palestinian security officials said.
Siestas Banned
MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) - The age-old Latin American tradition of shuttering the workplace for two hours at midday will soon be just a sleepy memory for many public workers in Nicaragua.
The government announced Monday that it is establishing a 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. workday - with no siesta time scheduled in the middle. It says the move will save the government $40 million.
The current work day in Nicaragua begins at 8 a.m. and then comes to a halt around 12 p.m., resuming from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
The new work day will begin June 1 for 70,000 public employees, President Arnoldo Aleman said.
Exempt from the schedule are health, education, police and army workers.
Private businesses, of course, have the option of changing or not.
Aleman made the announcement Monday night on his program, "The President Speaks with the People," on state-run radio and television.
"We will save with less telephone calls, and less use of gasoline, electricity and drinking water," Aleman said.
TITLE: Newly Crowned MVP Leads 76ers to Win
AUTHOR: By Rob Maaddi
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: PHILADELPHIA - Allen Iverson nailed a three-pointer to surpass 50 points, grinned like it was too easy and danced his way down the court.
The entire game was a celebration for the NBA's Most Valuable Player.
Iverson scored 52 points on stellar outside shooting and the Philadelphia 76ers beat the Toronto Raptors 121-88 Wednesday night to take a 3-2 lead in the Eastern Conference semifinal series.
Game 6 of the best-of-seven series is Friday night in Toronto.
"People say I have a flaw in my game - I'm not able to make the outside shot," Iverson said. "My whole thing is to punish people when they back up off me."
Iverson sprained his left thumb during the game, but X-rays were negative. He is expected to play Friday.
Vince Carter scored 16 points and Antonio Davis added 14 for the Raptors, who trail for the first time in the series.
Carter left in the fourth quarter when he was hit in the head by 76ers center Dikembe Mutombo, but said he had just a "major headache." Mutombo broke his left pinkie and is listed as day-to-day.
Aaron McKie had 19 points and nine assists for Philadelphia, and Mutombo added 14 points and nine rebounds.
The Sixers' party started when NBA commissioner David Stern presented Iverson with the MVP trophy before the game as a sellout crowd of 20,939 at the First Union Center went wild.
Philadelphia scored the first 11 points, led 17-4 midway through the first and 33-12 after one quarter.
Toronto never got closer than 17 in the last three quarters. The Raptors shot 53 percent in the first half, but trailed 62-40.
Raptors coach Lenny Wilkens said his team didn't show up.
"We were awful," Wilkens said.
Iverson, who scored a career-high 54 points in game 2 of the series, displayed all his weapons, especially his three-point shooting. He finished 21-of-32, including eight-of-14 from beyond the arc.
Only Michael Jordan scored more than 50 points twice in one playoff series. Jordan did it against Wilkens' Cleveland Cavaliers in 1988.
"If you take these [performances] for granted, there's something wrong," Sixers coach Larry Brown said. "This league has been around for a long time. He has 50 points twice in the series. He's just 6 feet [180 centimeters] and 165 pounds [75 kilograms] and he's only 25 years old. It's remarkable."
Iverson stopped and popped, penetrated with slashing drives, hurled his spindly body all over the court and faked defenders out of their shoes with regularity.
He hit a three-pointer for his last shot, missed three straight threes and took himself out of the game with 4:45 left.
"To me, [the basket] looked like an ocean," Iverson said.
The Sixers built a 25-point lead in the second quarter with Iverson scoring 17 points and hitting four three-pointers. Two of his threes came right after Dell Curry hit a three for Toronto.
Iverson drilled a three-pointer while falling out of bounds early in the third, hit a long jumper as Chris Childs knocked him to the floor, then put a classic move on Alvin Williams that left the Raptors guard mumbling to himself.
Iverson took a pass, jab-stepped, dribbled behind his back and hit a long jumper in Williams' face. He ran down the court, yelling at Jerome Williams, who was waiting to enter the game. The Sixers were critical of the way Jerome Williams celebrated during game 4, which Philadelphia eventually won 84-79.
"Once he got it going, it was like he could make any shot he wanted to," Wilkens said of Iverson.
TITLE: Strawberry Given Yet Another Chance
AUTHOR: By Vickie Chachere
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TAMPA, Florida - Darryl Strawberry avoided prison Thursday when a judge sentenced him to a drug treatment center for violating his probation during a four-day cocaine binge.
"You are at bat in the bottom of the ninth with two strikes against you," said Circuit Court Judge Florence Foster. "You have proven that you are a winner on the field. Now you must prove that you are a winner off the field."
Foster sent the 39-year-old former New York Yankees slugger to Phoenix House, a residential drug-treatment center without any gates, locks or fences. He must serve two years there, followed by one year of drug-offender probation.
The judge also imposed an 18-month suspended prison sentence, meaning Strawberry could be sent to prison if he violated terms of the ruling.
He was credited at least one month for time served in jail and at the hospital, will be subject to random urinalysis tests and be required to provide 100 hours of community service.
"This case is not about Darryl Strawberry the baseball player. This is about a person who is very sick," Strawberry said. "I just thank God I'm alive today to be in front of you to deal with the situation."
Strawberry, whose struggles with drug addiction, colon cancer and depression have been played out in a painfully public display, disappeared from a Tampa drug-treatment center March 29 for a four-day binge. He resurfaced and checked himself into the psychiatric ward of a Tampa hospital, where he has been since.
Foster last year put Strawberry under house arrest, had him fitted with an ankle monitor and warned him that another relapse would put him behind bars.
Dozens of supporters had asked Foster not to send Strawberry to prison. They said Strawberry is a typical addict who is no harm to anyone but himself and will relapse many times before overcoming his addiction.
His doctors told the judge the former outfielder is still battling cancer and has mental problems more severe than previously known. Strawberry told the judge earlier this month he wants to continue battling his "demons."
The eight-time All-Star got what he wanted: placement at Phoenix House, a center about 25 kilometers northeast of Ocala. Two probation officers work there to keep track of offenders.
TITLE: Avs Singing the Blues After Double-Overtime Loss to St. Louis
AUTHOR: By R.B. Fallstrom
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ST. LOUIS - It took the St. Louis Blues 60 shots to get to Patrick Roy, so they just kept firing.
Scott Young's goal at 10:27 of the second overtime gave the Blues a 4-3 victory over the Colorado Avalanche on Wednesday night, and new life in the Western Conference finals. The Blues twice rallied to tie it in the third period, and narrowed the Avalanche's series lead to 2-1 heading into game 4 Friday night in St. Louis.
Al MacInnis got off 10 shots, including a slap shot to the gut near the end of regulation that doubled over Roy, Chris Pronger had eight shots and Young six. Young, who had a career-high 40 goals in the regular season, took a pass from Pierre Turgeon at the blue line and beat Roy just inside the left post for his sixth goal of the postseason.
The Avalanche weren't blaming Roy for the game-winner, or the Blues' two tying goals. Defenseman Adam Foote said the strategy of sitting on the lead put too much pressure on Roy, who had allowed six goals in his previous six games.
Goals by Scott Mellanby and Jamal Mayers erased third-period deficits, and Alexander Khavanov also scored for the Blues, who totaled three goals in the first two games of the series at Denver. The goal ended the longest overtime of this year's playoffs, topping the Blues' victory in game 3 of their second-round series against Dallas by 61 seconds.
The Blues overcame a shaky outing by Roman Turek, who gave up three goals on 16 shots in regulation. Turek handed the Avalanche their second goal of the game when he fumbled the puck to Dan Hinote. He then gave Colorado an empty net at 4:40 of the first overtime after bobbling a Chris Drury drive, but managed to get his stick on a Stephane Yelle backhander that hit the post.
Ray Bourque and Eric Messier also scored for Colorado, which took 33 shots. Messier's goal on a two-on-one break with Shjon Podein gave the Avalanche a 3-2 lead with 7:20 to play.
Mayers, a fourth-line forward who scored a career-best eight goals in the regular season, forced overtime when he deflected Chris Pronger's shot past Roy with 5:43 left in regulation.
Mellanby tied it at 2 with the Blues' first even-strength goal of the series. He carried the puck into the offensive zone off a feed from Mike Eastwood, faked a forehand and whipped a backhander around Roy at 10:13 of the third.
Khavanov's third goal of the playoffs, an easy tap-in after Roy stopped Pavol Demitra's wrist shot, came on a power play and put St. Louis ahead for the first time in the series at 5:54 of the first.
The Avalanche, outshot 8-0 at the start, scored the first time they tested Turek. Just 1:02 after Colorado fell behind, Bourque scored his second goal of the postseason on a power-play drive from the point between Turek's pads.
Hinote had an empty net on the Avalanche's third shot at 8:36 of the first after Turek misplayed the puck on a dump-in by Dave Reid, which was officially credited as his first save. Turek came out of the net but couldn't decide whether to glove the puck, dive on it or swat it away. He did none of the above.
Part of the sellout crowd cheered sarcastically the next time Turek successfully handled the puck, on a Blues power play.
TITLE: 12-Year-Old Girl Qualifies for U.S. Women's Open
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NORTH PALM BEACH, Florida - Qualifying for the U.S. Women's Open was as easy as a 2-foot putt for 12-year-old Morgan Pressel.
Pressel shot a 2-under par 70 at a tournament Monday at Bear Lakes Country Club, and the seventh-grader qualified for the U.S. Women's Open on May 31 at Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club in Southern Pines, North Carolina.
She is among the youngest to qualify for the event. Beverly Klass was 10 years old when she played in the 1967 U.S. Women's Open.
"There were no expectations on me to qualify," Pressel said Monday. "I just went out there for experience. I thought I could do fairly well."
Pressel, of Boca Raton, said she was nervous on the first tee, but quickly settled down.
"Sitting there, shaking over my driver on the first tee, it was like 'Yikes!'" said Pressel, who is 157 centimeters tall and averages about 210 meters off the tee.
Despite some trouble on the final two holes, Pressel played a solid round, according to her mother Kathy.
"She's a very mature individual, especially when it comes to her golf," she said. "She handles herself very well on the golf course."